Hey guys, don't know if this is the right place for a build thread, but I wanted to have a post to sort of photodocument/journal my maintenance and mods to this truck. Been here a while in the first gen Dakota section, but I have a bunch of third gen Rams too, this one being my favorite.

2005 Dodge Ram 2500, 5.9 Cummins turbo diesel, NV5600 6 speed manual trans and hell yeah it's 4x4. Here's the truck as I bought it:



As you can see, it's a dentside. That's actually the good side... PO drug the other side along a fencepost, complete with gouges from the staples. It is a nice rust free southern truck, very clean aside from the bed. This pic is from 2018, so it's come a little ways so far, but plenty more to do.

​​​​​​

 

Pretty much the first thing I did to the truck was slap some black headlight housings with cheap LEDs in em. I know it's cheesy but I love it.




Looking back through these pictures is a trip. I really don't miss being dirt floor poor. Floor jack on muddy gravel is a treat, let me tell you what.

But that's what I did. The front end had the death wobble thing, so I replaced everything. Ball joints, drag link, track bar/bushings, all steering stuff. Plus I added a steering box brace, which really helped. Two years later and this truck still drives straight as an arrow after these repairs.

 

This truck previously belonged to a middle aged gentleman who had passed away. I bought it from his estate and they really knew nothing about the truck. So going from that I've been doing all the preventative maintenance I can just so I can know it was done. Truck had approx 185k miles when I got it.



Using my other third gen as a parts table was pretty common. I've since sold that truck, but still have the bed for a future project. While I had the front apart, I went ahead and redid the brakes, calipers and all. Used the power stop from Amazon, they've been great so far for 2 years /10k miles.




Also redid the u joints on my axle shafts. Noticed the splines were fudged on the front short side, so I replaced that too. Wheel hub bearings and the driveshaft carrier bearing were replaced as well.



Brakes on and just rolled out of the shop.

 

Driveshaft carrier bearing fun! The truck has been very easy to work on so far, it's been an enjoyable project.


Here's the bad side of the bed. This thing has some power and will get squirrelly. I can definitely see how it got wrapped around a pole on each side.

 

A couple of current pictures. Replaced the bed and swapped the wheels out from 265/70/17 on aftermarket to 315/70/17 on stock.

 

Nice. I am REAL curious what happened to the splines on that axle stub. That's gnarly.....

 

Looks amazing!

 

Looks good!

 

My best guess is it wasn't seated the whole way and wore off the splines. It wasn't making any noise, I just happened to notice it when pulling it out to do the u joints. I was pretty surprised to see it like that.

​​​​​​​Thank you!

And here's a few more pics. One from when I picked up the bed and another Dakota a little while back.

Here's a comparison with stock size tires vs the new 35s, then the first pic I took with them on, before I figured out how to get the bed off the back.



​​​​​​​

 

Swapping the bed was interesting. I have a lift, but I had to think a bit about how to shuffle the two beds.


So I lifted the new bed off by grabbing the 2x4s it was sitting on. Drove truck out, set bed down, one end on a dolly and I was able to move it out of the way by myself. Then disconnected everything on the original bed and lifted it off. Grabbing it like I did in the picture caused more damage, so don't do that if you care about yours. Then I backed my trailer into the shop and used a come along and some boards to get it loaded up, then moved out. I needed a friend to flip the new bed over gently, but installing it was easy by just lifting from the hooks inside the bed, no damage that way.

​​​​​​While the old one was off I took the opportunity to wire wheel the rust spots, hitting them with rust converter and then black Rust-Oleum. Frame is solid and I'd like to keep it that way for a long time!