Tightened the adjustment on the steering box. Much better, with almost no play. Along with HD steering and new ball joints and wheel bearings it feels new!

Here is how to tighten the steering if anyone is interested.
https://dodgeforum.com/forum/2nd-gen...-steering.html

 

edac that is quite a grille guard, could it be set up for a winch?

 

Just about half an hour ago, what I did with my Ram was hit a deer with it. It was a wrong place/wrong time scenario; she was invisible in the ditch and jumped out onto the road when we had maybe 30 feet between us, and in her panic she bolted in front of the truck. I managed to pitch the truck to the correct damage minimizing angle so the right front corner punched her just behind the shoulder and limited the truck damage to busting the plastic headlight/park light mount and minor tweaking of the plastic bumper pretty. The deer died of a broken neck.

That's a sweet looking cowcatcher. What brand is it and how much did it set you back? I've been meaning for a while now to upgrade, and now that the wife has experienced her first road kill I can probably get away with the purchase.

 

An update to my earlier post: There's no carcass at the scene of the fright, the only tracks near the place where she had lain and bled a little bit are deer tracks, and there are no signs of a carcass being dragged, so she left under her own power. She might have gone somewhere else to die, but she walked away from the spot where she landed after the strike so was in better shape than expected.

The turn signal portion of the headlight punched back into place solidly, so the tally of the damage is now:

• Broken plastic on the headlight aiming screw
• Minor additional tweakage of the bumper pretties
• Another cracked tab on the grille
• Fur in the bead of the tire and bumper pretties

If Miss Deer lived then everyone got off easy this time.

 

Wow. Getting thumped by a truck is usually a fatal experience. I am surprised she was able to get up, and walk away at all.... Was she on all four?

 

Believe it or not she post-holed away from the depression where she'd lain in the snow, and climbed a very steep little hill to get away from the road so any foot drag would certainly have shown on the slope. There's maybe a half teaspoon of blood, likely from a wound made by the torn plastic of the bumper pretty.

I know now why we didn't see her before we did. She came out of some trees above the road so was above our lights for most of her slipping and sliding traverse of the slope down to the road. The highway got plowed between the wreck and my return so it's just supposition on my part that the pause we saw when she got to about the fog line was her trying desperately to get stopped after the slide down the slope. Supposing my way along a mite further, she probably realized once her hooves hit slick pavement that there was no chance of stopping so the only option left was the desperate one.

Here's something you don't see every day:



Aftermarket accessory: Fur Lined Wheel!

 

Blondes should love that.

 

My wife was only temporarily blonde and not in this century, but she wants me to leave it. If fur trimmed Michelins aren't upscale, nothing is!

 

It would depend on the physical size of the winch as to whether or not it could be mounted on the bumper. Story behind whole vehicle is that she has been driving a Chev Tracker since 2002 and my granddaughter needed a vehicle. Can you imagine a 16 yr old girl with a 2500 in traffic? Wife told our son that she would trade him even the tracker for the Dodge. He agreed. She started to say what she wanted to do to it. So I got a bunch of catalogs, and gave her the passwords to my accounts at a bunch of the different truck places on line. Also expllained that the shipping cost could eat up a budget. She found one called builtfortrucks.com and started looking at it. She found the front bumper/cattle guard for $720 , it had been marked way down (300-400), with free shipping. She ordered it and eventually I had to drive about 100 miles to get it at the terminal. But she let me take the Dodge. It sat there until other items came in like new headlights. Its her baby and she can spend as much of her money on it as she wants. On the other hand she gave me an Aries grille guard for my blazer that she let me pick out. Not bad for a old couple. I am 76 and never tell a woman's age. Forgot to add that this is a TRX bumper. Also carried by CarID and a couple of other places. They still have it at $730 with free shipping if anyone wants to look.

 

All kind of deer get hit down here in southwest VA. It's actually just about as common for them to run off or get up and presumably go die elsewhere as it is that they don't. At least in my experience.