That looks like a lot of damage for 15mph.

 

Not really. take off the bumper and you can't see much damage after that.

I called my friend on Wednesday at how pissed I was. I was really contemplating on getting a tow truck to take it back and finish it myself before the weekend, lol. Anyway. He told his wife who works at the enterprise behind the shop about my anger towards the body shop. Well...she's friends with people at the body shop and she asked them what was up. Turns out that the body shop was trying to push the insurance to total the truck. That's part of the reason it took a while the first 2 weeks. "Because of all the aftermarket parts." First of all...I would have seriously contemplated on having the truck totaled so I can get money for a new toy. Secondly....aftermarket parts? Give me a break. A hood and headlights is all that there is on the front end. The bull bar was already out of the question, so it has nothing to do with the repairs. They spent $200 on new headlights. The funny thing is...I got them for $140. The ONLY reason they replaced them was because the mount was cracked. I could have easily fixed that myself. The damn lenses weren't even cracked. If they only listened to me when I told them my cell phone number. Apparently they were calling the wrong number for 2 weeks. So freakin stupid.

Anyway...I think my friends mentioning that got them to work faster. I should be getting it Tuesday latest. (2 days ahead of schedule...whoop d doo). Here's a picture my friend took yesterday:

 

Yeah that's ridiculous. I'm gettin my truck back from the body shop on sunday night, I'm pretty excited. I decided to have them paint the bumper body color, we'll see how I like it. I figured if I don't, I can just go back to black pretty easily. Post up pics when you get it back. Oh yeah and relating to your headlights: When I got backed into, one of my 25 dollar aftermarket fogs was cracked, and they gave me like 50 or 60 bucks! Works out to my advantage though, since I'm not paying.

 

not the headlights i ordered before. i dont care anymore. shiny paint at least.

 

it looks nice and crash is a crap

 

Welp...got my truck back today, and man....did I miss my baby. Everything looks pretty good. One thing that I looked forward to was the driver's side fender because there was something wrong with alignment ever since I got the truck. Now, everything is aligned nicely. The headlight alignment is kind of iffy, but it really doesn't look bad. All nice and shiny! =)

After driving my dad's Ram for 5 weeks, driving my truck again felt like driving a different car. Took a while for me to get used to it again, but man...my dad's truck was slow. My truck plants my *** back into the chair so much. Everything just feels so good about it...feels like a truck. This terrible experience sure has made me appreciate the truck a lot more.

As good as the front end looks...I really want the bull bar back on.

 

That looks real nice.

 

looks good

 

Okay so here's the deal...

I just tried a hunter bull bar. It's nothing compared to a Westin. I'm not sure if it's just the Dakota fitment, but it sits too low, it doesn't have proper reach to the mount....and it seems the bar is way to dinky. It's more of a cow bar, if you get what I'm saying.

Anyway...so I decided I'm going to give fixing my original bull bar a shot. It seems actually pretty manageable. There's quite a bit of rust spots that's going to take some work. I put the bent mount in a vise grip and I'm actually making progress on getting it straight again. There's only a few inches of crushed bar so I think bending a 3" exhaust pipe actually will work. I don't have the best of welders, so what I'm going to do is slip an adapter pipe to sit on the insides of the pipe and the bar. This way, I'll have more metal to work with so the result will be a better weld, better strength, and more durability. I'll never have to worry about the welds breaking that way. Much better than a butt-weld would do. I'll get progress pics as soon as I start work.

Oh and one more thing. I really don't like my headlights because of the mounting design. I talked to those bastards at the shop. Seems they can't return them. Oh, the price to way when people don't listen to you when you tell them your phone number.

My point is this...I am willing to sell them. I need to know if I actually can sell them first before I buy the ones I bought before. These are practically a week old, so I want to say $120 shipped OBO for anyone who wants these. Keep in mind if interest is actually shown, I won't be able to ship anything out until my new headlights come in...if I were to order them. Like I said...all depends on interest. Not that these headlights are BAD or anything...I just don't like the mount style. Seems like a pain in the *** to me. Let me know!

 

Repair to the bullbar is underway. So far I straightened out the mounting area as best I could. I'll try to do a little more fine tuning on the twisted metal, but so far the mount itself is in a satisfactory position. I managed to get a pipe bent and welded in. I haven't finished the welding yet as I have to take of the plastic crossbar cover first. I sort of hate how the pipe bend looks so thinned out...I'll see what I can do to get that smoothed out. But yea...so far everything is holding up. I have a lot of rust to treat so it's going to be a while until it gets primer.

Pics!