Hi Ya'll. I'm wannabhelthe from Texas. That's "want to be healthy" phonetically. I'm a shade tree mechanic that works on cars to keep my own on the road.
I'm new here on the Dodge forum but I'm on my second Dodge. I had a 1990 ram charger with a 318 engine for about 10 years. No matter how I abused it (and I did), the engine kept on going. It finally rusted out on me & I traded it off. I'm on my second Dodge now, It's a 2006 Dakota with a 3.7 engine. I bought it used a couple of weeks ago from a horrible fly-by-nite used car lot so I inherited a lot of problems. I have had to work on this one almost daily in my attempt to get it road worthy again. I just moved it from my shop in the back of the house to the driveway in front. Had to give it an almost full overhaul. Nothing was done to the heads other than pull & install. Same old cams, but EVERYTHING else was new, including the oil pump, timing chains, pistons, rings, & crankshaft.
I'm still working out the kinks where a couple of wires weren't plugged in right & now low oil pressure. I used a manual gauge to verify. 8 PSI at idle & 25 PSI from about 1500 RPM & up. The oil is Valvoline full synthetic 10W30.
New crankshaft is running with .003 to .004 clearances. Looks like I'm going to be pulling the valve covers to check the camshafts clearances. I sure wish there was a way to tighten clearances for the camshafts, but no inserts. I'm not going to spend another $600+ on new heads. I need a better fix if that's the problem.

 

Welcome to DF! Sounds like you got your hands full with that truck. Check out the 3rd gen Dakota section and post any specific questions you have there. Lots of good info and knowledgable folks in that section can help you out.