i looked at my truck one dayand saw my bumper didn't line up with my front fenders, the line under the headlights was off,and the lineunder the front grill was sticking foward to far. i went to the dealership and saw that all the dakotas there had the same problem. i knew they weren't going to fix it. so i took matters in my own hands to fix it. i took off the front bumper and then the front impact bar and took 7/8 inchs out of the tubes and then rewelded them. now it's all lined up !!!!! dodge screwed this up bad !!!! here's are some before and after pics.

 

see the line under the headlight is lined up now and the fender is too
.

 

see the line on the top of the bumper is flush with bottom of the grill now. this really helped out with the fat lip look the dakotas have , it doesn't fix it but it really helped !!!! i moved the bumper back 7/8 of an inch . dodge should not have missed this .

 

Wow that does make a difference, looks nice! Got any pictures of what you cut and rewelded?

 

it's figure 5 . there are 2 tubes welded on the back of the impact bar. the tubes are what i shortened .i cut the welds loose then milled 7/8 of an inch off of the tubes , then rewelded them back in place .this bar bolts to the hexagon tube on the front of the frame.

 

i found this picture (from phone) from last year. forgot how far the front bumper stuck out !!!!!


man what a difference !!!!!

 

Wow...that is really dramatic.

Another way to accomplish the same result. Hit something...hard...that'll move it back for ya. LOL...j/k.

 

I definitely want to do this now. What did you mill the tubes down with?

 

my brother in law and i i own a machine & welding shop together. i cut the lenght of the tubes down using a(knee mill) milling machineso they would be perfectly straight. you could alsosaw thembut you would have to be careful to get the cut straight . there's no room inside the impact bar to use a square when you have to weld them back.

 

Hmm, maybe I'll have a talk with the local machine shop when I go back home for summer. My grandfather's had them do a lot of work for him so they like us