The Ballad of Ol' Thumper

That's all for tonight, but I have more coming, I promise....

Wow, Fantastic build you did everything within reason to your financial situation the world need more people like you in it!!!
Please don't sell it you gave the Thumper a great home there should be a smile on the grill.

Dodge 1500 4X4 said:

Wow, Fantastic build you did everything within reason to your financial situation the world need more people like you in it!!!
Please don't sell it you gave the Thumper a great home there should be a smile on the grill.

Click to expand...

Oh believe me, I have no plans to sell it. It may not be ideal for winters up here, but I'm actually kinda glad for that. The fact that it doesn't have 4wd has kept me from driving it when there's salt on the roads. So during the winter, I'm primarily driving my Jeep and the Ram stays parked. The frame and body are rust free (except for the roof... thanks to the Florida sun) and I'd like to keep it that way. People up here are in shock when they see the lack of rust on this truck.

Everything is pretty much being done on a shoestring budget. So whatever I can do myself, I do it. If I can repair something, I repair it. If the repair doesn't hold up or doesn't have the results I want, I give in and buy a replacement. So far, that's a strategy that's worked well.

Alright, back to the progress.... keep in mind, this was all being done during COVID lockdowns.

My dash was in such bad shape that even the upper plastic structure of the dash that the top fastens to was non-existent. The AC vents, AC controls, headlight switch, and radio are all mounted to this upper structure.... so since mine had no structure, all of that was just laying in place on top of my dash.



If you look, you can see the license plate above my gauge cluster I was using to shield the glare off the sun coming in the windshield. I also had a grey microfiber blanket laying over top of everything to keep the sun from baking on the AC vents.... it really did make a huge difference, especially with the "greenhouse" effect of there being no tint on the front windows.

I actually sourced a dash assembly on FB marketplace for $50 before leaving FL. The plastic upper structure on this one was still not perfect, but it was in much better condition and provided a much better foundation to work from.





As you can see, I still had my work cut out for me.... so I went ahead and began stripping it down to the plastic frame and steel subframe. Then, I put trim screws into the factory screw holes and ran a "web" of wire to create a "torsion" effect while doing my fiberglass repairs on the plastic structure.





Luckily MOST of the broken pieces of this dash were with the dash when I bought it, so there were very few gaps that I had to bridge. The wire web proved to be very effective and helpful in rebuilding the structure of the dash. I even ended up using some of the wire as reinforcement underneath the fiberglass cloth I laid down in larger areas... kinda like using re-bar in concrete.

I waited until it had all cured and removed the plastic frame from the metal subframe.







Wire wheeled the frame, sanded, coated it in rust reformer, then threw it in the paint booth and voila...



I know it's a detail that's not even necessary.... these things are bare steel from the factory and they all flash rust...don't care what vehicle it is... the only ones that don't are high-end luxury cars or sports cars that have stainless steel subframes or aluminum subframes. But it drove me nuts to know there was rust INSIDE the truck.... so I painted mine up. No more rust.

Slapped a few coats of flat back on the subframe and put the plastic frame into the paint booth. I marked where my grounds were with a scratch awl before painting it so I could be sure to sand back down to bare metal when reinstalling everything. The main pivots on the bottom of the frame were also sanded back to bare metal before installing into the truck.



I went with a satin black for the plastics... but with the texture of the dash, it turned out more of a semi-gloss in some areas.





After it was all dry, I brought everything back out and reassembled the dash.





Then I began the process of removing the old dash from the truck...



...which wasn't too hard considering how brittle the plastic was. I took out all the screws and everything just started falling off.



Makes that heater and evap core replacement job really easy.

Also used my 3M Headlight Restoration kit to restore the gauge cluster cover. It looks like new now.



New dash in the truck...





...and new top





Nothing left of the old dash but a big ol pile of parts...





Unfortunately, this is as far as I got with this portion of the dash repair process. My 4th child was born right after this and he's been taking up a lot of my time. Still have to get a replacement bezel, paint the top, and then put the airbag back in.

Hopefully soon.

After that, well... it was time to put it to work! My cousin bought a John Deere X729 mower. It's really more of a compact tractor than a mower. Has a hydraulic 3 point lift, it's 4wd, has 4 wheel steering (seriously, you should see this thing ring a tree!), a 54" belly mower, and it's plumbed for a loader. The tractor itself weighs about 1200lbs and came with a plow attachment... so it wasn't fitting in the bed of the truck, for sure.





Really light tow for a Ram, but it was the only practical way to do it.

Oh yeah... forgot to mention I ditched the crossover tool box. Wasn't really going with the sport truck look I was wanting.



Starting to look a lot cleaner.

Started a job in June of 2020 at a local automotive repair shop. Got tired of sitting around and waiting for the state to pay the unemployment they promised everyone, and the severance pay was running out. Still had plenty in savings, but I didn't want to dip into that.

After starting there, I noticed a set of 3rd gen 20s sitting in the tire rack. Asked my boss what the story was with them. Said they were his and he was going to put them on his CJ.... until he realized how dumb they'd look on it. So he sold 'em to me for 600 bucks.







I also picked up one of those bullet antennas. Was a little bit tricky getting their "universal" adapters to adapt to it, but I liked the way it turned out. I also ditched the fogs because they were useless, were starting to not want to turn on, and I wasn't digging the look of them anymore.





Also did some more work... Pop's side by side needed some work and he had a load of gravel on the trailer. So I decided to get adventurous and see if I could fit it in the bed of my truck.





Yes it does. 1300+lbs Canam Defender HD5. Those tailgate cables should be a testament to you of how little this truck has. They held the weight of that thing the whole 10 miles to my shop and are still on the truck now - almost 3 years later.

My kids were playing hide and seek one day and decided to use the bed of my truck as a hiding spot.... not really a big deal at all, but unfortunately they used one of my tailpipes as a step up into the bed... needless to say, it didn't hold up to that. So I removed the other one at my shop and just let the tips end under the bed. Lately, I'd been noticing some rattling coming from the exhaust though and decided to take the tailpipes loose from the muffler and investigate... figured out my rattle...





All the baffles had broken loose from their welds and were just laying in the bottom of the muffler. So I STILL didn't really have a flowmaster muffler, I just had an oval-shaped can with the words "Flowmaster" stamped on it that wasn't much better than the straight pipes that were there before. I had another one laying around that I was going to put on my Jeep before I sold it, but it was a single outlet and I wasn't even sure exactly which FM muffler it was. After looking up the part numbers, the one that was already on my truck was a 40 series, and the spare one was a 40 series delta flow.... I had an idea of how I could fix my single outlet situation though and went to cutting and welding. I ended up cutting the front and rear covers of both mufflers off and welded the FM40's front and rear covers to the FM40DF can. Worked perfectly, albeit it's a little quieter and less rowdy than I was wanting.... but at least the exhaust isn't rattling anymore and it's not straight-piped.

The 2020-2021 winter brought some interesting driving conditions. My boss ended up getting a new set of tires for his Ram, so he gave me his old duratracs.





I also bought a roll-up tonneau cover off of ebay for my anniversary. So I threw that on their as well. Bought 4 sand tubes and put them in the bed for a little more weight on the rear wheels when driving on the snowy roads.



All in all, it was doing fine. Drove careful and made sure to leave early so I wasn't rushing. Never really got into a situation where I was worried about not having 4wd. Didn't WANT to drive my truck on the salt covered roads, but I had to roll with what I had. That was all working out just fine... until it didn't.





What appears to be an icy road, is actually my paved driveway. The weather here in KY has a bad habit of snowing, getting just above freezing during the day so the snow melts, then re-freezes at night and possibly even snowing again.... which is what happened here. The driveway melted and re-froze before we had a chance to plow it, so it was nice and slick by the time I was on my way home. The driveway is downhill and s-curved with a pond about 20 feet from the driveway on the curve back. Even with feathering the brake, the ice was too slick and the front slid to the left... as soon as my front tires hit the snow, they grabbed and pulled me sideways, stopping about 10 feet from that pond. To make matters worse, without having 4wd, I couldn't get myself back on the driveway, nor continue forward through the snow. So I grabbed a shovel, cleared as much snow as I could from the front wheels, then busted open one of those sandbags and spread the sand under the rear tires. Ended up driving forward through the yard and back onto the driveway... cussing the whole way.


It was at this point, the Ram was removed from a winter driving option and my Jeep was purchased.



You can read all about that, and my old Jeep, here

So the ram went back to being a summer truck and a tow/haul pig... just what a 2wd truck is made for!





















Ol' girl really does well for being a 1/2 ton with an original 5.2/46re combo on 230k miles! Even despite what I found in the transmission pan during my last time servicing it.

I did end up dropping the pan on it though. One morning, it just decided not to shift for me. Thought my transmission was toast. Pulled the codes and looked at the live data, and it was consistent with a bad governor and pressure solenoid. I went ahead and took the opportunity to throw in a shift kit and replace a few other components. TFOD Diesel kit, Sonnex super hold servo, new 3/4 spring, new accumulator piston, new solenoids, sensors, and governor. Also did a band adjustment and replaced the front band anchor and strut while I was in there doing everything.

Then, the unthinkable happened.... well.. not unthinkable, but highly undesirable.

Some dude completely blew a stop sign and used the front end of my truck to end his car's life....













Body shop estimates were around $4k, which I knew would total the truck out, being a 2wd with no power options, and high mileage... my truck is worth less than that according to blue book, which is what these insurance companies go by. Furthermore, in KY, if the damage exceeds 75% of the vehicle's value, you can't even buy it back as a salvage title. So it goes to the scrap yard or gets crushed. NOT MY TRUCK!!!!

The guy that pulled out in front of me said he was fine with going through insurance OR handshake agreement with cash. I sourced some used parts to repair it since none of the body shops indicated there was any frame or suspension damage. Picked up a hood, a left front fender, a SPORT grille, and a SPORT front bumper! Also grabbed a new set of headlights. All in all, the parts total was about 1200 bucks. I told the guy that pulled out in front of me that I'd take care of paint if he would just pay for the parts since I didn't want to go through insurance due to their high quotes.... no surprise, his response was "I don't have the money to do that." then proceeded to tell me there was no way the body shop quoted me that much. Whatever... what goes around comes around. Guess I'll just eat the cost of someone damaging my truck. At least I still have my truck.

Thanks for the updates! Good to see someone working to keep an old girl alive. I've got an 06 single cab V6 that I feel the same way about. Keep the updates coming.

If that was a newer truck it would have been totaled, glad you weren't hurt and can fix the damage and saved the old girl again!!!keep the updates coming it's a breath of fresh air in our all-new world.