Wow dude, $25,000! Some day. How much did you pay for the Kore Unlimited?

 

Yeah, it was hard to swallow.
The KORE Unlimited was like 13,000 back then. Now it is a little cheaper and comes with 3.0" shocks on all 4 corners. However, you have to cut up the bed. Mine was one of the first 3.0" front shocks publicly. They make a huge difference. When you come over the top of a whoop, and the front end leaves the ground, and the front slams down, you expect to get slammed hard. It just soaks it up and you can't even tell if you've hit the bump stops or not.
Here are the 3.0 shocks inside the VR coils. They take up almost the entire inner coil.


I loaded a few more photos.
Here is the Don's cross-over steering. The knuckles had to be drilled out to .75" to accept the heavy duty bolt. Same went for the Pitman Arm. This steel is really hard and took nearly an hour to do all 3 holes. The bars are 1.25" or 1.5" tube steel. I had to get a different mount for my steering stabilizer because the KORE pillow block wouldn't fit the larger OD. Alignments are a bitch with this setup though. You have to unbolt the bolt, loosen the lock nut, unscrew the bung the desired amount, and set the lock nut and rebolt the bar in place. Once it is where you want it though, alignment issues are gone. The knuckles are completely locked together and you don't have any more crappy tie rods.





This is Defiant Truck Products steering box brace. I like all the big brands in the suspension scene. I have no problem mixing KORE, Carli, Thruen and so on. The brace mounts under the pillow blocks for the anti-sway bar. Then you install a longer steering sector shaft to the steering box. This flange has bearings in it that stabilize the steering box. I won't say it solved a ton of problems, but it did tighten up the steering moderately. It alway seems that upgrades like this are a layered aproach to an overall goal.




Here is one of the photos of the Borgenson intermediate steering shaft. On the right is the stock unit. Just a general comparison of the quality difference. I'll say that getting the proper part from Borgenson was a real son of a bitch. They first sent me the wrong spline count connector for the steering box. Then we found out the overall length wasn't long enough. Then the replacement was too long.

So I chopped about 4 inches off the too long unit and got it all assembled finally. The unit comes with an anti-vibrational dampener. Precision steering is enhanced. However, to truly benefit from this, I need to replace my steering box with a tighter aftermarket one and switch to manual locking hubs. Some power steering upgrades would be nice. When you hit rough roads for a while, you can tell the power steering fluid is getting hot or it is starting to foam. Precision begins to degrade.

 

Interesting. Does your total price include labor?

 

For the KORE kit? No. Labor was very fair at DRC. Most of the KORE kit bolts on and was installed in 8 hours or so. Labor intensive areas were the fiberglass. Our plan of attack was to pull the front and rear axles, strip out the old suspension, cut off the front and rear fenders. Jeremy trucked the axles down to HRC to have the axle truss installed, regeared and the front locker installed.
I played the waiting game since I upgraded to the 3.0" shocks and it was during the Baja 500 last year.

The Centerline Turbine wheels were powder coated black by a guy Jeremy knows. They came out extremely nice. I have a couple rock chips in them, but I had expected worse consindering the hell I've put them through.

Here is where all the factory fenders were hacked off, and generally how the truck started life. Also the point of no return. You can see where the front edge of the bedsides were sawed off.


A closer view of the sawed off bedsides. You'll notice there isn't much support inside.


The fronts are pretty easy to remove. Only a few tack welds to break.


My ugly old pain in the *** grill. I cleaned it one time. My fingers were cut and bleeding trying to clean all the bug guts out of it. Coating it in Line-X was the smartest move ever.


Front glass installed. Axles AWOL.


The rear glass installed. You'll notice that the rocker panel lines are already off here. Glassworks fit is not the best. Every Dodge I've seen with bedsides has this problem.


The back.


The fenders really stick out. 4" of flare and 3" of rise over stock.


This shows how small the factory wheels look under the massive maw of the fenders.




Cute little wheels. I need to sell these aluminum wheels.


I love these control arms. They are a mother of 10 bitches to rebuild though.


This axle truss has saved my *** a few times. It's taken some solid hits and kept me from bending the axle.


Rear shock mounts and reservoirs.


Full Deaver leaf springs.




My little tires when they had some tread.