Engine was rusty crusty, so the first thing I did was put the heads in an electrolysis bath. Also scored a set of my favorite valve covers.





Experimenting with a 110v water heater element for a DIY hot tank




Scored a solvent tank

 

Time for the block to go in the electric pixie bath. Boy was it full of rust!






Tried to make a DIY hot tank, it was hot garbage.



I also bought a sandblast cabinet from Jegs, and it was quite literally the worst item I've ever bought. Just awful. I've modified it extensively over the years and it's...just okay now. Here's an example of the build quality, when you install wheels and stand it up, it just bends the metal feet and falls over.

 

After a lot of research and planning, I decided to stick with the OEM long runner intake manifold for this build and FULLY port it. That means the entire runner, which is very rarely done. A guy on youtube named Thomas Beyer did it, and I decided to follow along.


Intake blasted and clean


Divider cut down for VRP plates


Starts out looking like a hack job

This is my first time really porting anything

Not the greatest edges on the first port, but look at that finish.



Much larger than the original port




Thanks to some core shift, I blew some holes in it and tried to fix it with aluminum wire in the mig, which just made the holes way bigger. So I put some JB weld on it, but wasn't very satisfied with this. Not knowing what to do to fix this made me avoid the intake for a long time, so we will pick back up on that later.


Epoxy before grinding down

Tried alumaweld, works well out here, but not well in the runner because the walls are so thin

 

Time to test some paint colors. The shade of primer underneath makes a big difference.








My neighbors love me

 

Attention diverted briefly to this beauty



Hmmm, maybe blue?



Shades of red

 

It's starting to get warmer, so time to start bodywork.

My intention was to restore the bed that I had, so I went to work on getting the rust taken care of on the underside. I decided to try recoating afterwards with a product called rustbullet.

Ultimately though, the crossmembers were in too rough of shape, and they aren't readily available. There are people claiming to sell them on ebay, but they're actually chevy ones so they aren't the right height.

I found a "rust free" bed locally for $400 and hauled it home.

Here's the new bed:

One of the reasons these beds rust so badly is because there is a foam in between the sheet metal in the arches that holds moisture and rots them from the backside.

I built a big cart from scrap I had laying around so I could shuffle the bed in and out of the garage while I did the bodywork.









I decided that the UV damage on the new bed was bad enough that the clear and base coat needed to come off. However, it had to live outside, so it couldn't sit outside in bare metal, so I tried stripping it just to the primer, which was quite the adventure. I also went ahead and cut out the rot on one side.

 

After a whole hell of a lot of trial and error, it's starting to look like a bed.











If you embark on a job like this, be prepared to spend endless hours doing this:

Onto the other side we go




Did a quick restoration on my bench grinder. You use one of these a lot on a project like this.

 

Decided to purchase a set of Kensai wheels for the truck and a set of 285/70/17 BFGs. I ended up later changing my mind and refinishing the stock wheels, so these are currently for sale (the wheels, not the tires). Hit me up if you're interested, I'll give you a good deal on them.





I realized around this time that I had never made a video documenting just how bad the truck was at the start.

 

Awesome. This is one I'm gonna follow. The ORE trucks were the Holy Grail of the 2nd gens. Becoming VERY hard to find around here.

 

Turns out those wheels stick out from the front fenders by a little bit and would sling rocks all down the side of my truck if I didn't put fender flares on it, which I do not want to do. Also, I started really liking the idea of putting this truck together in such a fashion that someone who wasn't a mopar person could see it and plausibly wonder if it was some sort of factory special edition rather than a custom truck.

So I decided to refinish the ORE wheels. I began by trying to strip them with an angle grinder and wire wheel, which works but can't get everywhere. Ultimately I ended up blasting them. Unfortunately my blast cabinet wasn't touching the factory primer or powdercoat.




So I did what any good man would do and bought more tools. This time a sand blasting attachment for my pressure washer.







Then into primer they go




Paint color is Dodge Brass Monkey Metallic, the same code used on the new Chargers/Challengers



I then decided to make custom center caps for them that would color match the body. So I ordered a ram head stencil and made it happen.