I'm looking into purchacing a used 1999 1500 and was wondering what are some of the known issues I need to look for. I've found so far that the bottoms of the doors are prone to rusting. Any engine or tranny issues to be aware of? Its the 5.2 V8, auto, 4x2.

 

Look down the throttle body and check for a puddle of oil inside the intake (plenum gasket) balljoints & pitman arms on 2WD's are pretty common. The factory balljoints don't have grease zerks on them so you will be able to tell if they are still in there, the rubber boot will probably show some tearing if they are original. The cat's are pretty crappy if it rattles it's toast. All pretty cheap do it yourself fixes and I assume you are looking at a vehicle "as is" if not the saftey/emission item's should be done anyway. Check the tranny fluid and if it looks clean & the truck shifts ok then it's probably fine.

 

Id pressure test the coolant system in addition to what 982500Ram advised on... I bought my Ram back in Jan and it had more coolant leaks than you could shake a stick at. Long and short dealer said that they would fix the problems in order to keep me satisfied and not return the truck.... one or two cans of stop leak, some brake clean,and they called it good, and tell me that they replaced the water pump. Two months go by and I have a leaky truck again and a messed up driveway. Not all bad, I got them to fix it no cost to me and the trucks good now but it was almost $2,500 in repair bills that they suffered from that blunder.

Pressure testers are a loaner tool from most any auto parts store and are well worth the time spent.

 

Water pump....rust on the bottom of the doors, as said the cat is a problem in these. Take it for a test drive where there are some bumps and make sure it doesnt have death wobble. This isnt really a problem, but they re-flashed the pcm's on some of these and it gives the truck less power. So you might wanna look on the pcm on the passenger firewall under the hood and see if it says factory authorized upgrade or something on it.

 

it would pay to read all the TSB's for that model year

http://dodgeram.info/tsb/index.html

Dave Fritz also provides a checklist:

http://dodgeram.org/buying_info/Inspect.htm