I would never have a real mistress as I love my wife too much... almost as much as my truck!..... OK no one tell her I said that or I get the boot! Seriously my wife is the best thing that ever happened to me and now she has let me start my perfect truck build too. I do love her... the wife ... ok and the truck too!

The Mistress is a dark sexy beast. She was born in 2001 and came in with the perfect body - 5.9lt R/T AWD w/AC,PDB,PS,AMFMCD, PWR/HTD Front Seats, REAR AC, 3rd Row, 8 inch suspension lift and 2 inch body lift. 35x12.50 all around with a Ford Locker front end! I can unlock the fronts and make this 2WD!!

So I began the project. This project is to make this the ultimate hunting rig. It will have new front and rear bumpers, Roof rack, sidestep boxes, renewed audio, and extras! I have already started so I am going to post to this thread the items currently done.
{EDIT} - Here is a link to the Album!!! https://dodgeforum.com/g/album/9156855

I am willing to answer any questions I can and will look for your feedback and input all the way!
Thanks DF and all the great members!
Coog

 

Ok so the first project was to get some decent sound going. So why not go for a NAV and Handsfree (please never text and drive!) and since I was going to upgrade I wanted something that worked as well as it rocked! See the added pictures of the new Kenwood 7" touchscreen with integrated Android Auto, NAV, Handsfree, Backup Camera and integrated steering wheel controls. This was backed by a full JL speaker set. 6" Fronts, Titanium Tweets in A Pillar, 8" drivers in rear doors, 10" sub in custom box (where the trunk door was!) This is run by a Pioneer 700watt Digital Amp in the trunk. The sound is fantastic and the handsfree is awesome - I like talking to text it is too easy!

Pics added to album now! - https://dodgeforum.com/g/album/9156855

P.S. I will explain the hoses in the picture in another posting!

 

Does that have a solid front axle???

Looks good.

 

The next thing I decided to do was to black out the rims. If you look at the original purchase pictures I got your standard grey aluminum rims with the truck. I had no desire to buy and change these but wanted a different look. So I decided since this truck is going to be Flat on MAT black I would make the rims Flat black. I toolk them off one at a time. Deflated them so I could place cut cardboard between the rim and the tire. Then using etching primer primed and then painted each rim in Flat black. The pics in the album will show you before and after.

https://dodgeforum.com/g/album/edit/...bum_id=9156855

 

[EDIT] - Thank you! I forgot to say that and I am very appreciative of any replies and comments on my Mistress

As you may know (or not) the Durango like many other Dodge products uses a torsion bar front suspension. Pros and Cons to this..... Pro - You can use a wrench to raise your rig 2" over stock - its free! Conversly you can lower it 2" under stock - still free!!!

CON - Want to give it a 3+ inch lift (mine has 8") then you need to replace the front end. The rear can be done with shackles but the front needs a new setup so often guys will take a Ford F150 Locker front end (That is what is on the Mistress) and put it under the Durango (or whatever) This allows for things like very large springs to help lift it up. The Mistress has 8" in suspension and 2" in body lifts. The front end hubs are manual lock outs. I leave them locked to keep my AWD as it was factory (keeps the front diff lubed and working) but, I can unlock them and effectively turn it into a 2WD truck.

I bought it this way - but as a rock crawler/dune runner it works out real well anyway.
Coog

 

The next project was LED replacement Head and Tail lights. I also added the LED Fogs since it did not have a factory fog set installed. Yes the fogs are connected to the switch inside properly via the standard wire harness. This allows me to use them with the driving lights.

The LED head and tail lights were bought with blackout lenses (well really dark anyway) and I replaced all bulbs with LED lights. I decided to put Blue LED's in the side markers... until they tell me I cant!!.....

NOTE!!!!! If you do the full LED light swap as I did even for my turn signals please understand they do not pull the same amount of power that regular filament bulbs do. This in turn tricks the computer into thinking the bulb is burned out and so when you hit your blinkers they run fast (like when you lose a bulb) You can check and yes the LED is working. So I think I might include a resistor to help draw down a little more and see if I can trick it back. Until then I think it is an attention grabber when other drivers see the high speed LED cool looking girl winking at them..... Then I let her speak and she rumbles on by!

Coog

 

The next project was to give her a fine Prada handbag! She needed to be able to carry stuff on the outside too! So I designed, built and installed a custom rack. I wanted something much stronger than the plastic and tin the Durango standard rack comes with and I didnt want the tiny tube Tule racks that cost $500. So I shutup and put up!

I did the design myself. The rack is bolted into the roof frame in 12 spots. The rack can hold your Toyota Prius on it - in case I am sinking and need an escape vehicle!

The rack has a 60" x 36" useable space for gear etc (36" wide to hold the spare!)
The 2 long square tubes are actually cross connected via the 1" tubes - 1 at front and 1 at rear. The tubes have been sealed and a Filler cap as well as a drain valve have been added. I can store 12.5 gallons of gas in these tanks. The hose in the picture with the sub-woofer is used to connect the drain to my gas tank and I have a second hose long enough to reach other vehicles.

I choose this design to remove the bulky tall 5 gallon cans we all tie up on the rack. These are often not distributed and all end up at the rear corner of the rack. My tubes distribute the liquid load front to rear and left to right sides evenly.

Then I added front 52" arced LED light bar
LEFT and RIGHT have 26" LED light bars
Rear has dual 6" LED mini light bars - soon to change to another 26" as I like the look better.

I ran each of these lights to the dash on individual lighted flip switches (see pics in album). Now I can be seen by the space station!!!! I am keeping the rig Flat/MAT black, so if it is all turned off it will be hard to see at night in the woods. If I turn on all the lights it will be hard for Mr. Magoo to miss it!

I am going to ask the site owner for some more space to upload some of the rack and future build pics. I have some good ones of it during the build. YES I can can even share the rack design. I did it in Sketchup and I even did some prelim pricing in the file too! The steel was about $250.00 plus misc costs for the filler cap hose and valve.
Coog

 

I have also added some feed back..... I am not affiliated. I do not get any money for this promo but I wanted to show you what I have since it is a pretty sweet and inexpensive setup....

I have the ZUS OBDII with Power and Tire monitor systems. You can buy these products on multiple sites but here is the main site - https://www.nonda.co/
All I can say is I think this paid for itself already since the power monitor caught a bad battery under the hood! It sent alerts to my phone I tracked it over time. I saw the charging was fine but the battery was not holding a charger. I went down and put an Optima battery and no more alerts.

The tire presure has been sending alerts when the right rear goes down (2 month leak and havent tended to her yet) but I know when it dips below my prescribed low pressure level and I go throw in some air to get it back to normal.

The OBDII part is nice because I can see all the sensors live but it also gives me runtime numbers live like actual speed. RPM, Load on the tuck etc.

Worth looking into if your running a post 1994 rig but not a brand new one that has on board display for all this!
Coog