Basslicks
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2018
- Posts
- 189
- Reaction score
- 58
- Location
- Dry Ridge, KY
- Ram Year
- 2001
- Engine
- 5.2 Magnum
Figured I'd go ahead and create a thread to track my progress. Don't know if I'd necessarily call it a "build" thread because I don't intend on doing anything wild and crazy with it... nothing to the level of my old Cherokee which I converted to 4wd, lifted 3.5", added some 33's, and lots of other custom touches to make it a decent trail Jeep and crawler.
No, my plans are pretty simple. Little bit of a resto-mod. My dad had a '99 Ram QC Laramie with this same motor and transmission back in '00 and always loved it. I moved away in '02 and by the time I moved back in '03, he had traded it in on an '02. So I was a little bummed.
Flash-forward a good number of years and I was in need of a pickup truck. The aforementioned Jeep Cherokee was great... easy to work on, fun, got me from a-b, dependable for a 25+ year old vehicle.. but it was lacking a few things. A bed, payload capacity, towing capacity, cargo room.... yeah I really needed a pickup truck. I had a little 4x8 trailer, but hooking and unhooking from that thing all the time is a PITA... and what if you're somewhere and spontaneously need to haul something... gotta run home and get the trailer.
Anyway.... I sold the Jeep after buying my wife a Tahoe and started driving her car around. Figured I'd just drive it until I found a good deal on a truck. As luck would have it, a friend of mine at work had this 2001 Ram QC. He and his wife were expecting their 2nd child and there would be no room for another baby seat in the truck.
I asked him if he'd be interested in trading me straight up for my car and he was very interested. He talked it over with his wife, I talked things over with mine (which, her response was classically "honey, it's your vehicle... I'm not gonna tell you no" - love her to death) and a week later, we swapped titles.
My car was a '00 Chrysler 300m. Luxurious, roomy, comfy, cold AC and hot heat. Perfect family car. I picked it up a few years ago for 900 bucks and fixed just about everything wrong with it. Really good lookin' car by the time we parted ways.
The truck.... wellllll.......
Aside from the broken and missing dash, the rest of the interior is actually in really good shape.
But the outside... yeah... years of neglect have caused the clear coat to burn off. Paint is wearing through to the primer in some places... to bare metal in others. The passenger side has damage from one of the other previous owners turning too sharply and side-swiping a metal pole. You can see the shoddy body repair attempt in the pictures. The rear bumper has been hit as well and is sagging and has a dent in it... it was apparently pushed into the bed because there's a dent in the lower bed quarter from it. On the driver's side bed quarter, you can see where someone snagged something because that panel is pulled out a little. The plastics are faded and sun-damaged, the tail lights are perfect, amazingly, the headlights are fogged up, cracked, and yellowed, and the chrome is peeling off the grille.
The truck smokes like a chimney, runs so rich it will choke you out, has dual exhaust with no muffler or cat, no heat, no ac (which to add insult to that injury - manual windows), none of the factory speakers work (so the guy I got it from put computer and surround sound speakers sitting unsecured in various places), and the deck just flops around on the dash, and the window tint on the front two windows are bubbled up and faded.... almost like whoever tinted it didn't know a thing about applying tint and instead of having it re-done, just left it that way.
Aside from that - the frame and underside of the truck is rust-free. The transmission shifts smooth and the motor fires on all 8 and idles pretty decently for the amount of oil it consumes (about a quart every fillup).The exhaust sounds great with the windows up... but sounds like a trashy redneck truck with the windows down. Other than the trouble areas I had mentioned before, the rest of the body is pretty straight. Few dents and dings... nothing a little massaging and body filler can't handle. And hey, it came with nerf bars and a fiberglass bed cover with good gas struts.
5.2 liter, automatic trans, 203k miles on both.
Like I said, my plans are resto-mod. I want to restore the body and interior to its former glory, but with a few custom touches. Nothing crazy. RAM has come a long with since the 2nd gen body style. There's a few changes that they made that I want to incorporate into this build.
Yeah.... follow along, 'cause I got my work cut out for me.
No, my plans are pretty simple. Little bit of a resto-mod. My dad had a '99 Ram QC Laramie with this same motor and transmission back in '00 and always loved it. I moved away in '02 and by the time I moved back in '03, he had traded it in on an '02. So I was a little bummed.
Flash-forward a good number of years and I was in need of a pickup truck. The aforementioned Jeep Cherokee was great... easy to work on, fun, got me from a-b, dependable for a 25+ year old vehicle.. but it was lacking a few things. A bed, payload capacity, towing capacity, cargo room.... yeah I really needed a pickup truck. I had a little 4x8 trailer, but hooking and unhooking from that thing all the time is a PITA... and what if you're somewhere and spontaneously need to haul something... gotta run home and get the trailer.
Anyway.... I sold the Jeep after buying my wife a Tahoe and started driving her car around. Figured I'd just drive it until I found a good deal on a truck. As luck would have it, a friend of mine at work had this 2001 Ram QC. He and his wife were expecting their 2nd child and there would be no room for another baby seat in the truck.
I asked him if he'd be interested in trading me straight up for my car and he was very interested. He talked it over with his wife, I talked things over with mine (which, her response was classically "honey, it's your vehicle... I'm not gonna tell you no" - love her to death) and a week later, we swapped titles.
My car was a '00 Chrysler 300m. Luxurious, roomy, comfy, cold AC and hot heat. Perfect family car. I picked it up a few years ago for 900 bucks and fixed just about everything wrong with it. Really good lookin' car by the time we parted ways.
The truck.... wellllll.......
Aside from the broken and missing dash, the rest of the interior is actually in really good shape.
But the outside... yeah... years of neglect have caused the clear coat to burn off. Paint is wearing through to the primer in some places... to bare metal in others. The passenger side has damage from one of the other previous owners turning too sharply and side-swiping a metal pole. You can see the shoddy body repair attempt in the pictures. The rear bumper has been hit as well and is sagging and has a dent in it... it was apparently pushed into the bed because there's a dent in the lower bed quarter from it. On the driver's side bed quarter, you can see where someone snagged something because that panel is pulled out a little. The plastics are faded and sun-damaged, the tail lights are perfect, amazingly, the headlights are fogged up, cracked, and yellowed, and the chrome is peeling off the grille.
The truck smokes like a chimney, runs so rich it will choke you out, has dual exhaust with no muffler or cat, no heat, no ac (which to add insult to that injury - manual windows), none of the factory speakers work (so the guy I got it from put computer and surround sound speakers sitting unsecured in various places), and the deck just flops around on the dash, and the window tint on the front two windows are bubbled up and faded.... almost like whoever tinted it didn't know a thing about applying tint and instead of having it re-done, just left it that way.
Aside from that - the frame and underside of the truck is rust-free. The transmission shifts smooth and the motor fires on all 8 and idles pretty decently for the amount of oil it consumes (about a quart every fillup).The exhaust sounds great with the windows up... but sounds like a trashy redneck truck with the windows down. Other than the trouble areas I had mentioned before, the rest of the body is pretty straight. Few dents and dings... nothing a little massaging and body filler can't handle. And hey, it came with nerf bars and a fiberglass bed cover with good gas struts.
5.2 liter, automatic trans, 203k miles on both.
Like I said, my plans are resto-mod. I want to restore the body and interior to its former glory, but with a few custom touches. Nothing crazy. RAM has come a long with since the 2nd gen body style. There's a few changes that they made that I want to incorporate into this build.
Yeah.... follow along, 'cause I got my work cut out for me.