NightMares 01 Sport Build

[NightMares]

That looks awesome. I'm digging the light bar way more than those big circle lights. Lol

Haha figured I'd go a little more "traditional" for the modern day. The round ones are going to my brother when we put the MOVE bumper on his truck. Got some heating and hammering to get it straight enough to install, but it'll work for him.

Wheel just showed up today for the TireGate, so hopefully I can work the install in this week and have it buttoned up by the weekend. Going on a trip with some buddies who are coming home and we're thinking photo shoot so it'd be nice to have it complete appearance wise.

My charger for my drill took a ****, and of course I can't find a replacement one right now. I paid a lot of money for the drill and attachments, so for the time being I purchased the same version except it's corded and I'll just pull the charger off Amazon or something, but for now I can finish up the halo's on the Dually's at finally get those wired in. From there, rock lights are all that's really left.

Getting close to the end now!

 

[Pull Ya]

"Getting close to the end now!"

*****-----famous last words!!!!!!

Jay

 

[NightMares]

"Getting close to the end now!"

*****-----famous last words!!!!!!

Jay

Haha that's in reference to the current project on it. The truck will NEVER be done, it's always going to be transforming. But the TireGate and rock lights are the last little bit of this section of the build.

Only thing visually I've really got left is hood, and I'm still bouncing between waiting for the Amerihood or doing the louvers so that's not my main focus right now.

I am starting to notice it acting up in places mechanically, so I think once I see this last stretch through I'm going to focus on rebuilding drive train. Transmission, 2200 converter, top end rebuild on motor, u-joints through out the drive shafts, etc.

 

[IrocRam]

Your truck is a perfect example of why this body style is the best one dodge ever made. I just picked up my third 2nd gen yesterday and eventually I plan to repaint it this red. I don't think there's a better looking truck out there than a 2nd gen ram that's red.

 

[NightMares]

Your truck is a perfect example of why this body style is the best one dodge ever made. I just picked up my third 2nd gen yesterday and eventually I plan to repaint it this red. I don't think there's a better looking truck out there than a 2nd gen ram that's red.

Thanks man. My favorite color is red so it works out perfect for me.

Bad update more so for me. My buddy lives(d) in north Dakota and is moving back this weekend. Him and his fiancee just bought a house and she's been moving by herself so Sunday night i went to help with the heavy stuff. Wound up up tearing my labrum in my shoulder helping pick up a ~400lb dresser. It's too swollen to know if i need surgery or not right now, luckily it looks good though as my shoulder isn't popping or anything, just a constant heavy hurt and sharp pains when moved.

So at this time wiring is about all i can do. My buddy is coming home tomorrow and this weekend we're going wheeling, so Friday him and my brother are going to help install the TireGate while i wire in and install the dually lights, radiance, and ledconcepts. Depending on time might try to get the rock lights done too.

 

[IrocRam]

Thanks man. My favorite color is red so it works out perfect for me.

Bad update more so for me. My buddy lives(d) in north Dakota and is moving back this weekend. Him and his fiancee just bought a house and she's been moving by herself so Sunday night i went to help with the heavy stuff. Wound up up tearing my labrum in my shoulder helping pick up a ~400lb dresser. It's too swollen to know if i need surgery or not right now, luckily it looks good though as my shoulder isn't popping or anything, just a constant heavy hurt and sharp pains when moved.

So at this time wiring is about all i can do. My buddy is coming home tomorrow and this weekend we're going wheeling, so Friday him and my brother are going to help install the TireGate while i wire in and install the dually lights, radiance, and ledconcepts. Depending on time might try to get the rock lights done too.

That sucks man. I feel you on the injury. Mine isn't as bad I don't think but I ripped my left index finger tip off last week with a hammer. It's still pretty unuseable and I can't do a whole lot with my hand because of it. I had to get it glued back on and wrapped up. Probably lose my finger nail though. So you aren't alone in not being able to super heavy stuff.

I'm interested to know about the cab lights though, which is what I'm assuming is what you refer to as the dialog lights. I like them on every truck I see and would like to eventually add them to mine.

 

[NightMares]

That sucks man. I feel you on the injury. Mine isn't as bad I don't think but I ripped my left index finger tip off last week with a hammer. It's still pretty unuseable and I can't do a whole lot with my hand because of it. I had to get it glued back on and wrapped up. Probably lose my finger nail though. So you aren't alone in not being able to super heavy stuff.

I'm interested to know about the cab lights though, which is what I'm assuming is what you refer to as the dialog lights. I like them on every truck I see and would like to eventually add them to mine.

No cab lights, rock lights. I like cab lights on tow rigs or 3/4 ton and bigger trucks, but being a half ton and more of a dedicated wheeler I don't really want to install anything on the roof. The only style cab lights I've seen I like were actually off road lights that resembled cab lights, like a Rigid Dually configured in a cab light design. I saw them on a concept a while back but haven't seen anything since that picture, and of course I didn't think to screenshot or save anything. Love to either build some or buy some, but at this time I've got other priorities before adding MORE light to the truck, especially considering what I already have is actually overkill.

The ones I have are from Rigid Industries, there's 6 red small LED lights. They get mounted on the underside of the truck to illuminate the ground when wheeling at night so you can see the what's going on underneath. I'm doing one light in each wheel well above the tires and one centered in the middle of the truck on the rocker (below the quad cab door) on each side.

They look something like this when used

and here's what they actually are



Update for now. Got the LEDConcepts finally done. Gotta get the lights installed in the bumper and hook the controller up to the wiring that's already there. From there it's winch and TireGate install this Saturday morning with my buddy and my little brother. Should look awesome when it's all said and done.

Awesome cell phone quality pictures

 

[IrocRam]

Ah gotcha. I'm not a fan of lights underneath a truck but in this case it serves a purpose. I dislike when I see people driving around streets with underglow on. I just find it annoying but to each their own. I think they will look pretty cool on your truck, especially that red on red scheme going.

 

[NightMares]

Thanks. In all actuality I should have gone white with the rock lights so they are fully functional, I am worried about the red washing into rocks or whatever. But the Rigid’s are BRIGHT, plus with the red I it’ll draw more attention at our shows this summer so they’re functional for both show and go!

Fun update. TireGate and Dually’s with the LEDConcepts are IN!

TireGate: Went fairly flawless. The only issue I ran into was the bolts supplied didn’t match thread pitch wise. You have to remove the strikers for the tailgate, which if no one has ever done that it leaves a square slider there that you have to put a bolt into. With the threads being different and us trying to finish it up last night at 10:00pm, we didn’t have an option to find the correct bolts. So I removed the tail lights and with a small crow bar bent the catch that holds the slider, slid the slider out and found some nylon lock nuts that worked with the supplied bolts from Wilco. Tailgate can still always be reinstalled, but it will require removing the tail lights again to insert the sliders back in. Short of that, it works, it’s tight, no noise when going down the road. Had to swing into Schwab this morning to get the spare mounted and balanced as our schedule prevented my co-workers from getting it done for me this past week, but it looks good. Only thing left is to find a way to mount the axe and shovel, mount the jack, and get the I Rack fully installed with the license plate and Roto-pax.

LEDConcepts: Fairly pleased with the outcome. They are super bright, but not overpowering for oncoming traffic at night. With the headlights off they illuminate maybe 5 feet in front of the truck, so they shouldn’t pose a problem with the cops. I am slightly disappointed with the color, the “white” that the lights come with has a very strong blue tint to them, so they don’t match my headlight color at all. Not even close. I can’t run red or blue, green and blue don’t match, but the amber looks really good with the headlights on, plus it’s legal so that’s where they’ll stay while driving.

Enough blah blah again. Here’s the fun.

 

[NightMares]

 

[derekp]

Dude I'm really digging the lights and front bumper. I'm not too sure on the tire gate though, it probably looks better in person.

 

[Pull Ya]

Side note: That sure is some beautiful country you live in!!!!!
Jay

 

[NightMares]

Dude I'm really digging the lights and front bumper. I'm not too sure on the tire gate though, it probably looks better in person.

Thanks man, the TireGate really does look better in person. I love the look it gave, plus it ties right into that Rear Runner so I'm just going to get that secured a little better than the 2 bolts it has and call the ass end done.

I'm loving the lights and bumper. I really need to get the winch installed so I can get the bumper fully lined up and finally call it complete. Also wire in the Radiance. I'm playing with the idea of doing the halo around the light bar as well from LED Concepts. Leave it on red but wire it in with the switch for the Radiance so it fully illuminates red and has a full red halo around it. We'll see how everything looks when it's fully complete. Only thing I'm worried about is the whole not matching thing.

Also playing with headlight ideas. I can't decide if I'm going to go retrofit with it, if I do then I'll do it with dual projectors, Morimoto mini's for low beam and matchbox for high beams. I'll do halo's on both, then demon eyes on the low beams. Problem is I'm really not a fan of projectors at all, so I'm also toying with the idea of just some half rings like the 3rd gen that circulates Instagram.

Side note: That sure is some beautiful country you live in!!!!!
Jay

Thanks! Nothing better than living at the base of mountains like these. I can drive 30 minutes south and be in the desert, 30 minutes north and be in trees so thick you can't see more than 30 feet, and nestled right between them in a larger city that offers just about everything.

 

[Pull Ya]

Have you ever considered that maybe you live to close to the 4x4 parts store????
Jay

 

[NightMares]

Have you ever considered that maybe you live to close to the 4x4 parts store????
Jay

Well seeing as that's where I work I'd actually say I pretty much live IN one haha

 

[Pull Ya]

You've done an excellent job on your truck and I think we all appreciate the detailed information on the parts and installation process. Thank You!!!
Jay

 

[NightMares]

Well thank you! Sometimes i overload information but i try to get my ideas out so everyone can visualize what I'm talking about. Obviously it's easier to see when i get it done but i feel like thus far my vision has been pretty accurately coming through on this. I'm extremely happy with the outcome so far.

 

[NightMares]

So some updates for future reference and planning on the exterior.

Despite mechanical issues starting to show their symptoms, I've got a lot of shows filling the books up that I need to have my truck at this summer. So, at this time I've only got 2 more items I'm preparing to do exterior wise to the truck. The mechanical repairs needed aren't fully needed at this time, if they start to become worse than the truck will just need to be left at my work's shop and I'll have to pay to have a co-worker do the repairs (unless it's something I can do over a weekend when there's no event).

First, hood. Decided to keep it simple and different. I'm doing the louvers. Maybe someday I'll do the Amerihood, but for now the louvers will get it set up and ready for the upcoming shows and runs I've got this season. Very basic. Black powder coated, 3 piece. One big center section, two long sections on the outsides of the hood, directly above the intake on the passenger side and mirrored on the drivers side.

Second, headlights. With the halo's in the Dually's, and the Radiance having a backlight, it's caused my headlights to become....boring. So, I'm going to go all out on this. Plan is as follows: Using the current set of Spyder black sport 2 piece headlights I have now. Signal housings will remain the way they are. Headlights is where the build will be going on.

Being that I have LEDConcepts for the halo's on the Rigid's, I'm going to use them for all the colormorph on the headlights just in case there's a difference in remotes between brands. The components for the actual headlights will come from Morimoto.

Parts that I will order:

MMoto Mini H1 7.0 Projectors
MMoto Mini Gatling Shrouds
MMoto H1 6500k HID's
LEDC Colormorph Demon Eyes
LEDC Colormorph 70mm Halo's
LEDC Colormorph 9005/9006 Fog Light Bulb (bulb type undecided yet)
LEDC Colormorph LED Strip 16' Weatherproof Interior Exterior

Build plans: Disassemble housings (obviously). Paint housing black with high beam reflectors masked off. Once dried, remove mask and use the VHT night shades to smoke the reflector so it's still visible, but not fully mirrored. Install projectors in low beam location. Paint shrouds red. Install halo's and demon eyes on projectors. Where high beam is located on my sport housings I will install the Colormorph fog light bulbs, as I plan to make the projector function for both high beam and low beam like a non sport headlight. To immitate the Rigid Radiance back light, I'll install the flexable strips forming a full square around the projector mounted to the back of the housing with the light illuminating towards the base of the projector. With the leftover strips as I won't use 16' in the headlights, I'm going to install them in the grille opening and paint the red spider on the radiator like I had planned a while back. If I have any leftover, I'll run the remaining strips across the top of the openings of the slots in the bumper.

For controllers, I'm going to run quite a few lights here. Each controller controls up to 4 different units, the one controller I have currently controls the 4 Dually lights. The demon eyes and projector halo's are another 4, taking up a 2nd controller. The fog light bulbs in the high beam slot and the backlight for the housings are another 4 taking up a 3rd controller. The one strip inside the grille and if enough is left for the slots in the bumper will be another 2, requiring a 4th controller. The 3 controllers for the headlights and fog lights will be accommodating the wiring that's already in place for the set that's currently there, which is set to run with ignition on. All of those will be ran on amber for daily driving, and can obviously be changed to red for photo's and shows. The 3rd controller for the bulbs in the high beam locations and back lighting I'll dim if necessary for DD use if for any reason the fog light bulbs wind up projecting too much light out, although with the nightshades sprayed over the mirror I don't see that happening. The grille and bumper lights will be run on a switch and will be powered on only for shows and events.

So the only thing I have left to do is find out what fog light bulb I need to order in. LEDConcepts sells them as a 9005 or 9006 (and others that aren't even close). I still have the black housings that were on the truck from the bumper failure, so I'll take one of those down and see which bulb will be easier to get to install inside the high beam slot. From there, it's just build and install.

Should look pretty wicked I think. Thanks to 98hemi-ram I was able to do a photo shop of his headlights on my truck, and that was the deciding factor. I honestly hate projector headlights, but seeing his build, and seeing them on my truck after some editing, it's full on convinced me. Ties in the with #sinisterscarlet name it's acquired.

It'll look pretty much identical to what's shown, only with a mirrored high beam towards the grille. Hopefully I'll start ordering all the parts around the first of May, as I'm way over budget for this month after the recent updates between the bumper and the TireGate.

Photo's

Red (couldn't photo chop the amber without doing the whole truck, but you get the idea)



Amber

 

[NightMares]

Alright so finally got my headlight and hood parts ordered in. Should be here by this weekend.

For now I'm actually holding off on HID bulbs. We got a customer bringing his late model GMC in that has Spyder smoked projectors and doesn't want to deal with HID bulbs and likes LED. So we ordered some H1 360 LED bulbs from SBL for him and I'm going to see how they work on his truck. I technically blew my budget for the next few months within the past few weeks now so I need to cut something somewhere. If I can get away with $20 in bulbs to get me by for a few months then I'll take it. If they don't pan out then I'll order some bulbs in through my work that I can get for cheap to get me by as well. Either way.

But Morimoto projectors and shrouds
LEDConcepts colormorph demon eyes and halo's
LEDConcepts colormorph 9006 fog light bulbs
LEDConcepts 16' strip
2 splitters for the strips

Unfortunately the 16' strips are backordered right now so I've got some time to focus on the other projects, such as hood and graphics. Tire tracks are cool, and I'm going to incorporate them back in, but that magnesium chloride crap they laid down last winter took its toll on everything, plus I think it's time to switch it up.

Before explaining the graphics, I figure I’ll go ahead and let out the big news. I’M STARTING MY OWN BUSINESS! My buddy has a 3rd bay on his detail shop that’s just full of storage that needs cleaned out. He offered it to me if I clean it out, and pay 1/3 of his lease plus a fair share of utilities and everything. For now I’ll be going under his name as I don’t have a business license yet, although it’ll be branched off of his with my name above my bay and we’ll share the office. But I’ve enrolled in school for this summer for some business classes and once I get my license and everything I’ll set out on my own and start up the official shop. I’ve already got several projects lined up to start with, so this weekend I’ll be organizing my tools and getting the space cleaned out so I can start up. Another buddy has an old 4 post that’s been outside of his dad’s shop for about 6 months that they offered to me for a pretty fair price, it’s not ideal for suspension work but it’s better than floor jacks. Plus it’s “mobile” so it won’t require me bolting it to the concrete floor and leaving holes and cracks when I do relocate for myself. I’m also going into this with an open mind to start up fabricating. I obviously do not have a CNC so I can’t start full on reproducing mass amounts of stuff, but I’ve got a couple guys in a few clubs that have talked to me at my current work about projects that would be easy enough. If I can finally fully master welding and fabricating, I might start building and selling my own products like roof racks, sliders, skid plates, custom bull bars, stuff like that. For the time being I’m going to continue working at my current job, and starting in June I’m going part time from 8:30am to 2:00pm Monday – Friday and then from 3:00pm to 7:00pm I’ll be at my shop working on the projects. There’s a few that will be time crunched (done in one day type thing) that I’ll have to do on Saturday’s and Sunday’s, but through the week days I have some longer term projects I’m going to be starting up with. Motor swap on a CJ7 from a 304 to a GM 383 and 700R4 is one, rust repair and paint on a CJ5, and I’m not sure if the guy is serious or not but an SAS on a 97 Chevy 1500. If he’s serious that will be my time to shine showing what I’ll be capable of, and going from there. My buddy’s dad that I’m buying the 4 post from owns a paint shop, and has offered it to me on the weekends so long as he doesn’t have anything sitting in them and I supply my own materials, so the rust repair and body work I’ll get done in my small shop, then prime and paint will be done over a weekend at the paint shop. I’m super excited that my dream is finally becoming a reality.

With that said, the graphics will incorporate my name for the business. Thinking of having the Maxxis Trepadors (next tires I’m going to use) running up the side like how the MTR currently on the cab is, except I’m going to angle it slightly more and start further forward at the front of the doors. It’ll run up towards the rear cab corner up top. From there, starting on the back of the front doors, I’ll bring a tire track up about mid door, then have it turn about 45 degress to go horizontal and run back to the tail lights. On top of the tracks on the bed I’ll have NightMares Off Road. On the hood, I’m going to remove the NightMares Off Road decals that replaced the sport decals and run another set of tracks going vertical up the fenders (like the lemans stripes) and have them run up to the large louver centered in the hood and disappear underneath. Where the sport decals were placed I’m going to have my newly designed NightMares logo placed in the tire track.

I’ll get to photo chopping it up today to make sure that’s how I want it, but in my mind that’s how I want it set up.

 

[NightMares]

Alright so I'm finally almost fully functional and got a huge amount out of the way this morning. Very time consuming, took me almost 5 hours to get it all done.

This morning consisted of:

Oil Change
Transmission drain and fill, new filter, bands adjusted (definitely seemed to help some more)
Rock lights installed
Radiance hooked up
Edge CTS2 EAS 12V system finally installed

Rock lights were a **** sucker but I took my time running all the wires and everything up the frame rails. 6 total, one in each wheel well and one under each rocker. Radiance was straight forward as hell, super easy.

The Edge was a bigger problem than expected. Hook up was easy, wiring was easy, and getting the toggles to function properly were easy as well. The problem....naming the *******. You have to use the MyStyle software on a computer, and the system is piggy backed (2 switches for each EAS, requiring 2 total). But they don't run in series. It's Switch One, Switch Two, Switch One, Switch Two. The problem is the software on the computer doesn't recognize that, so you have to just pick and hope. I got it wrong the first time, but made notes of which one it was. Once I got the names correct, I hooked it back up and found out that the names didn't save. So unplug, rename, save, and try again. Then I realized I misspelled "Spots" so I had to correct. I changed it on the software, but when I plugged it back into the truck again it didn't save the other 3. So again I had to go in, change the names of all of them, and go for another try. Then, the names didn't fit so on the first switch it was "Radianc" and the second was "LED Lig" and rock lights were "Rock Lig" and ****. So again I had to go in and change them to what they are now. Then....******* of course I forgot to change "Spots" to "Spots" again so I had to go through it ALL again. Took me like 3 hours at work to get it right, but it's DONE.

Hopefully tonight I'll get the hood louver installed and finish up the wiring on the Dually's in the bumper as well. I ripped all the wiring out when I did the bumper swap and I forgot to grab new harnesses from the store last night before leaving work, and of course didn't have those at the shop this morning. Easy enough though, it's just one positive wire to each switch from the EAS pigtail I put under the hood, and one negative running to the ground block supplied with the rock lights.

But here's pictures. Looks pretty ******* ******* too in the dark.