OH yes, I did the left one the short one and it fit perfect, right one should be here tomorrow, you have to make sure you get the half shaft for after 9/11/2000 so more or less get one for a 2001 dakota same thing. I had to do all this crap because I had to take it all apart to replace my oil pan, rotted out. so front end is all new, seals half shafts and inner shafts , hub/bearings, and rotors and brake pads. I got the right one out of the half shaft (cv shaft) with lots of heat and a 25 lbs sledge. couldn't budge the little one left side. all added to my short steal pile.

 

Yup that is the one I got...yeah. Found out about mine when under there trying to trace an oil leak (found it from the crankshaft oil seal which was the cause of huge mucky mess all the way back to the transfer case/center support)...right side looks good, so only gotta deal with the left one for now.

Good to know I'm not the only one adding to a scrap pile...did have to laugh how most threads made it sound soooooo easy for the inner cv shaft to "slide off" using two pry bars leaving the intermediate shaft in the diff...yeah right!!!

Figure it is held by a snap ring/clip on both ends...so gotta 50/50 chance of it staying in the dif. I suppose, my just popped out of the dif. first. Bigger hammer as they say!

 

took mine to a shop and the guy broke a 6 ft air pickle bar LOL glad i paid to have that one done, rusty snap ring

 

no kidding! guess even bigger hammers aren't enough sometimes Hoping to get the part in today so I can get it all back together and back on the road, it pains me to see her sitting out there.

 

Update: so this weekend I buttoned her all up...and results are... damn clunk/pop/pop still there...when I say clunk/pop/pop still there, I mean it only happens at the time of braking to complete stop and then at take off from complete stop (doesn't happen while turning nor going over bumps or potholes). I know it is not from the prop/front half driveshaft...'cause i already took it off thinking it was the u-joints (did find I need a new one since stuff in the double u-joint part that connects to transfer case has a broken rubber thingy..yeah yeah I forget the tech term). okay so quick history, heard clunk/pop/pop (described above), researched entire WorldWideWeb, took out drive shaft (not the cv axles at that point), test drove it with half shaft out and clunk/pop/pop still there, researched more, got back under her and found bunch of play and leaky inner driverside cv axle (part that connects with front dif), removed cv axle, and since intermediate shaft came out of dif as opposed to the inner cv axle portion, i ordered the innermediate shaft, got it about 5-7 days later, put it all back together (prop/front drive shaft/half-shaft...whatever you wanna call it is still out) and clunk/pop/pop still there. Since she was all opened up I did go ahead and changed out driver side hub assembly since bearing sounded bad, oh and I replaced shocks since I was in there.... UGH!!! so next thing I checked was the sway bar bushings (all look decent...probably will replace them soon just for good measure), but I am leaning towards lower control arm bushings since they look to be almost non-existant where rubber meets metal sleeve.

Long story short, and my apologies as I haven't done much research on forum yet for replacing LCA bushings, but suggestions/comments on if I need to remove the entire control arm to replace those bushings? just to be clear I'm not referring to the ball joints I know what those are and I checked 'em and they appear to be fine (uppers and lowers).

Thanks for reading and any direction you might be able to provide would be super coolio.