Are you going to notch the cross member or cut the oil pan and rebuild it to fit ?
To check you're clearance , measure "from" the center of the transmission cross~member mount to the "rear" of the cross member , under the your 4.7... Then measure from the center of the transmission mount to the back of the oil pan on the Hemi .. If the space between "on the truck" is less than the space between the oil pan and Trans. cross~member then the cross member won't let the oil pan go down behind it.. I hope I explained that right.. It's worth making sure now with a tape measure instead of trying to fit the oil pan behind the cross~member .. I found that out the hard way..

 

Already handled it, that's why I got the Ram oil pan. No cutting or notching required. It fits like a glove. Durango pan was very close to fitting aswell without any modification, but the steering rack was in the way by about 1/4 inch.

 

so a hemi is bolt on???

 

For my 2wd, not exactly. I was just refering to the oil pan. I don't have to modify it because it has plenty of clearance all around. I will still need to cut and reweld the block mounted brackets for the motor mounts.

By the way, got some good news and bad, bad news is; there's a clunk in my front end again and I suspect the POS mevotech balljoint or the upper control arm, drivers side...damnit.

Good news is this; Anyone have any idea how much it would cost to have professionally painted?

IMG_20120413_191430.jpg

 

i painted mine myself. looks fine. i got the paint and primer from imatch.com i think. they have genuine mopar paint.

 

I don't have a way to paint mine out of the weather. So It's going to Mako as soon as I get about $500.00 I can spare .. They did a friends truck about 6 years ago and it still looks great . If you don't want to paint it yourself , I would call and see what they would charge..
Dodge must have moved that cross member location foreword some time between 02' and 05'..

 

This is a great project and plan. I can't wait to see it finished.

 

I dont own a Dakota or hemi(would like a 5.9mag dakota in future)..But I am liking this thread ALOT...

 

Thanks for the support guys.



Its a full and complete redesign. There is virtua lly nothing comparable other than the Dakota name, from 04 to 05+. That cross member on yours, that was under the sump, for me its just a flat peice of iron that I can unbolt, its connected to the back part of the control arms. It has over 9" of clearance before the oilpan bolts. The steering rack on mine is mounted on the back of the front crossmember rather than the front of the back crossmember, so it only interfered with a durango pan and has about an inch of free space with the Ram pan.

They shouldn't have changed so much but they did.

 

WOW , !! So you're saying that for Dodge to offer a Hemi in a Gen.4 Dakota Quad Cab would have been simple for them to do .. I wonder why they didn't.. It would have been nice .. A special edition Hemi Quad Dakota would have sold like hot~cakes and held their
value like the Rumble Bee and Daytona..