Hi all. I'm new to the pick-up scene. Been into large American luxury vehicles from the 90s up to now. I'm not actually the owner of the truck. My son just turned 16 and had been pining for a truck over the past year so I helped him find one. The biggest requirement was that it had to have a manual transmission. That proved not so easy to find. We finally found a 2001 5.2l 5spd short bed. Being in Syracuse NY it is difficult to find an older truck that is not crusty. The one we found spent most of its life in Florida then Virginia. Of course that means the paint is in bad shape but I'll take that any day over rust. The truck has just over 176k miles and generally runs great. It is a very comfortable ride for me being 6'3". It is a bare bones work truck, but does have a/c. Now I'm jealous and want one for myself.

I still need to figure out if the plenum has been done but I have not heard pinging yet. It was a 60 minute drive to get the truck home with lots of hills. But maybe the PO was using higher octane gas. The dash has the typical cracking. I'm pretty sure the rear end needs a rebuild. I'm guessing the clutch doesn't have much life left, but is not slipping yet. And it is sometimes hard to get it into first gear. I generally have to put it into 2nd then first and sometimes that is still a bit hard.

My son is in the automotive program in high school so he'll be doing a lot of hands on learning over the next year. He'll be able to bring it to school and get it on a lift to work on it and have a shop full of tools.

I still need to figure out how to download the fsm. I tried once just after signing up and was denied access. I also looked for hard copies on eBay and they seem to still be a bit pricey, but I'll keep looking because I prefer to have a hard copy.

I'm sure we'll have lots of questions along the way so I wanted to get an introduction out there.

Thanks for reading.

 

Welcome to DF! Check out the 2nd gen Ram section.

 

hi nice to meet you