the life of Raiden (ramportin1's truck)

[ramportin1]

He was born (purchased) on 4th of july 2008. My very first NEW vehicle, a bright white RAM 1500 4X4 QCRB Big horn edition, 3.92LSD 5.7 HEMI and i waited and sacrificed a lot to get him! I started with a used 92 power ram 250 4X4, then a used 04 ram 1500 and finally was able to buy a new one. For the first couple years i didnt do anything to it, he was under warranty and i wanted to keep it that way. Unfortunately i dont have any pics of him 100% stock as i only have pics on phones and well, my phone from 2008 is long gone HOWEVER i do have a few pics of him 99% stock lol so close enough.

My first "mod" was in 2011 and it was a DIY roll bar that i made out of actual food grade SS (my old work had strict regulations so any used metal could not be reused and i bought the used tubing for scrap cost.) This isnt something i wanted for actual roll protection rather just for looks. spent a few days measuring and cutting and using the bender at my buddies shop, welded it together, welded some light mounting tabs ontop, drilled out a few holes for lighting wires to route through the inside, primered it flat black, drilled the holes in my bed and bolted it in. To this day ive never installed lights on it lol probably never will but who knows.

Actually i guess technically my first "mod" was AVS window visors which i did right after purchasing the truck. so heres the few pictures i have of it in this form, even still got the factory tires on. sorry for the crappy pics but its my phone taking a picture of a 2011 phones screen

 

[ramportin1]

The next couple things i did was install a Hell bent steel 2.5" level kit and 35x12.50 NITTO trail grappler tires. This resulted in some SERIOUS rubbing issues lol so i got some 2" wheel spacers and put them on and trimmed up my plastics and ground effect on the bumper a lot and that helped but definitely rubbed at about 3/4 turn but i didnt care much i was stoked about the tires. This was about the point i got mudding crazy with it and did some off roading that was way out of my trucks league but meh, it was fun.
needless to say shortly after i had a lot of bad front end stuff.
So i tore the truck apart, replaced CV's, tie rod's, all ball joints with MOOG HD greasables, sway bar bushings, rack and pinion. Replaced everything basically in the front but was still left with a cracked bumper.
After this i decided no more mudding lol

heres a few pics during this period. the one picture with it jacked up is where i was installing the level.

 

[ramportin1]

right around this point i also hacked out the resonators, i hacked off all the piping from the Y and welded on my flowmaster 10 series muffler, then just a short turn down off the muffler. I personally love the sound of flowmaster and magnaflow, i had dual MF's on my 99 Z28 as well as my 85 monte carlo ss, i had dual 40 series on my 92 ram, a super 44 on my 04 and wanted MAX loudness with this truck so tried out the 10 series and was definitely not dissapointed. The 10 series is not for the faint of heart to say the least lol it is not reccomended by FM for a street vehicle because of how loud the drone will be but i LOVE it and it is loud as you can get without headers or straight piped. Also went ahead on paid to get my front windows tinted to match the backs right around this point as well.

 

[ramportin1]

Just so everyones aware i will be doing this thread while at work lol so it might take a few days to get caught upt to now and off memory from quite a few years back so some things might not be exactly in order and im sure i will forget lots of little things but ill do my best

 

[chrisp2493]

Yes! Finally you got around to starting one of these haha. Keep em comin!

 

[ramportin1]

Yes! Finally you got around to starting one of these haha. Keep em comin!

lol, glad to see you here man. I keep doing more and more and more and now with the new plan i figured id better just start it now and accept the fact that the truck will never actually be "finished"

 

[chrisp2493]

Oh I’ll be here on this thread a lot [emoji1303] keep up the good work

 

[ramportin1]

i believe the next thing i did was debadge the ram 1500 off the doors and HEMI off the fenders. i also pulled out my roll bar and rattle can painted it white just to see what it looked like, ended up really liking the look so my plan was bolt it back in temporarily until i got some time to give it a real paint job..... well i still havent got around to doing that lol but i must say that rattle can job with no clear has held up insanely well except the inside of the legs where my dirtbike fenders/tires hit it 24/7 being loaded up. Someday i will get around to painting it again or possibly powder coating

 

[ramportin1]

I kept hinting to the ball and chains around christmas time the bumper that i wanted, which was the N-FAB lightbar bumper, IDK what year this was im guessing christmas of 2013 to finally replace my cracked bumper [from the previous mudding.] The bumper [at the time] was super unique, never ever saw a truck with it and i always LOVED the pre runner/baja trophy truck look. I figured if santa didnt get it for me, right after christmas im ordering it.

and sure enough the wife came through! was a major PITA to install, from my off roading incident where i kissed a tree lol i actually had slightly bent the driver side frame horn/pad so the bumper wouldnt line up straight. i ended up having to cut them off and weld on the mounts that were supposed to bolt on so those mounts are definitely never coming off lol then was able to get the bumper perfect.

 

[MADDOG]

I LOL'd when I read your first posts here as I know exactly how it goes...one mod leads to another, which leads to another, etc...It's like the never ending story!

My 3RD gen MegaCan, RamZilla, had a LOT of mods on it...I'd barely get one done and the dang thing would ask for another one!

I managed to save most of my pics and decided to do a video.

 

[ramportin1]

I LOL'd when I read your first posts here as I know exactly how it goes...one mod leads to another, which leads to another, etc...It's like the never ending story!

My 3RD gen MegaCan, RamZilla, had a LOT of mods on it...I'd barely get one done and the dang thing would ask for another one!

I managed to save most of my pics and decided to do a video.

That is exactly what has happened here with mine and the time in between mods since joining this forum has multiplied like X50 lol. ive found myself ordering another mod before the one i just ordered has even arrived!
That video is a awesome idea! love it man

 

[ramportin1]

I guess i should say my plan for this truck has always been #1 practical for my use. Outside of my daily driver it is also a VERY frequent dirtbike hauler sometimes loading 3 bikes a trip by myself so a big lift was out, But a little higher and MT's are definitely good to have as i go through some gnarly trails to get to riding spots.
#2 The truck must outlive me lol so nothing that is going to put a stress on the motor/trans outside of normal use.
#3 a little extra power with a few bolt ons.
#4 look sick to me lol
#5 try not to go broke doing this

 

[ramportin1]

so sometime around this point i hit the good old 60k mile mark and decided i was doing the works. I flushed/drained all fluids, coolant, motor/trans oil, TC, diffs, replaced the leaking water pump and radiator, T-stat, spark plugs, trans filter and cleaned the throttle body. also while i was doing this i decided to order a S&B CAI and swap out the stocker

 

[ramportin1]

was liking the idea of a storm trooper look so i ordered some black headlight covers because i wanted BLACK headlights, not just smoked and i didnt really drive the truck at night much [or so i thought] so ordered them and actually loved em. got tons of looks and held up great, anytime you need to see you simply pull them off lol velcro 3M tape holds em on. I also bought some Rigid D-series spot lights and mounted them to my bumper as driving through the woods [literally] at night with my dirtbikes proved to be not good with the black covers.

Ill mention that i went many years with no lightbars in my lightbar bumper because, back when i bought this bumper there were not lightbar options like today. It was pretty much Rigid or the very few cheap ones that only came in popular sizes and my bumper was specifically made for a Rigid bar that was a off size. Not a problem anymore but for a long time it was and i didnt want huge spacers

 

[ramportin1]

At some point here you will probably see a pic or 2 of my truck without the headlight covers or the front windows tinted and that is because i was pulled over and got a $250 ticket for illegal lighting and a $200 ticket for illegal tint. so i had to remove them for my court date so those tickets didnt go on my driving record

 

[Demon-HeMi]

bout time to see your truck on this section lol

 

[ramportin1]

Trying to remember everything and in what order is rough lol Hats off to you remembering it all on your trucks and maddog for having pics of everything.

 

[ramportin1]

Now it was time for rim shopping! I mustve looked at a billion different rims and spent a easy month deciding on which ones i wanted and what size. After lots of looking i decided on some 20X9 0 O/S Moto Metal M0969 satin black's with red accents

 

[ramportin1]

i forgot but long before the rims, i purchased a DiabloSport Trinity from Hemifever. Had no clue about the forum at this point but i have a buddy who has a SRT10 and he had a trinity and tuned by Hemifever, he spoke highly of the company and damn did his truck run ON POINT so that was definitely good enough for me. So i got my custom 92 octane tune after a few logs and sean making adjustments to what i wanted, and he definitely got it spot on. Tune was flawless for my use and truck ran amazing and smooth as hell.

Also bought a Kenwood DDX593 DVD head unit and installed that so i could finally stream my music VIA bluetooth off my android like i could in my lexus.

 

[ramportin1]

I then took off the aluminum skid plate from my bumper and tried my hand at powder coating, at the time one of my friends worked at a PC company and he would do side jobs after hours. i asked him if i could go in with him one day and show me how to do my own skid plate lol i never powdered anything until this point. so he showed me and i did my skid plate and it came out flawless if i say so myself!