working on a 99 Dak cab and 1/2, 2wd, 3.9/auto. Bought on 6/1 and hit a damn deer with it on way home from work 6/10. broad daylight, 4:30 PM Chicago time.
I had stayed after work to swap over the other 2 tires off the rims from the '92 cab and 1/2 that the 99 replaced, same size tires and the ones on the 92 had less than 1000 miles....
had started before "end of workday" while I was still on the clock, only ~15 min later than my usual leave time.

Anyways, went to junkyard and got new grille, radiator shroud and anti freeze bottle. Oh and headlights too.
got new (NOS) condenser, and aftermarket radiator. I found a place online from where I was able to get a new "heavy duty" radiator (included factory style external/aux trans cooler and the hard lines for the same $ as the local outfits wanted for the standard replacement without the external cooler. Was wanting to add an extra cooler anyway so I figured "why not"?
made in China, (of course/ what isn't these days?) came from a place called Radiator Express, box says "Performance Radiator Inc.".
No body damage, just the parts mentioned above/ plus strangely the bumper brackets but not the bumper weird. I removed and straightened the bent brackets and then was looking around online and found new bumper brackets for a real reasonable price from of all places JCWhitney. For that price I figure that now those original brackets have been bent 2x//// once by the deer and again by me straightening them out. They aint as robust as I would have expected anyways..... so I bought the new ones.
I had to take the core support loose from the frame and unbolt the fronts of the fenders from the support to wiggle it around enuf to get the bumper brackets out. the bolts are knurled like a wheel stud so they don't spin when tightening/ loosening them. if you could just pop the bolts out like "normal", would not have had to loosen core support. Everything went back together and lined up great. Bumper even lines up like it did before the deer strike, which is great, because nice chrome front bumpers are tough to find in any kind of decent shape around here in the yards. most are crinkled and/or rotten to the core. closed the hood, gaps at bumper, grille, and down each side at the fenders is just great. The NOS condenser dropped right in, bolted up perfectly.
but the problem is the radiator. It came with new rubber bumpers/frame locators and they drop right in like they should. but when I try to bolt the radiator in at the top, both "captured nuts" in the top bar of the core support, are off by about 3/8", seems the captured nuts are both offset too far to the passenger side.
Being as how the condenser bolts in just fine, and everything else that I touched lines up right like it should, I'm thinking this radiator must just be a "blem".... the pegs that go into the rubber stoppers slightly off, or the upper mount locations are both off from where they should be. I have the radiator just setting in place and the shroud also just setting in there, and everything besides the 2 U shaped cutouts for the bushings that the mount bolts go thru looks just like it all should. I can't compare to the old radiator because those mounts were all that what busted out of the old radiator, the driver side took out a chunk of the plastic tank right behind the upper hose nipple..... the core actually looks untouched.

any thoughts here? I could go hit the junkyard and get another upper core support "tie bar" but I don't think that will solve this problem.

 

Probably poor chinese quality. I got my replacement radiator from CSF. Could always just run it in with sheet metal screws.

FYI you could have also "upgraded" to the 01+ radiator and upper radiator hose and bottles and gained a little room under the hood.