the life of Raiden (ramportin1's truck)

[ramportin1]

Some pictures i have of the truck at this stage and ill edit my 60k mile post and throw in a another pic i found. The picture with no skid plate is when i took it off to powder coat it and i thought it was a funny picture so i took it lol

 

[ramportin1]

I bought a stubby bullet antenna from a local shop here in Portland OR that was flat black and amazing! It was fairly expensive, but I'll be damned if my HD stations stayed in HD without falling in and out, reception was great! I had it for a few years I think and then some son of a B*tch stole, and to throw salt in the wound it was stolen from my works HQ parking lot while my wife was driving it to do a quick run for me... knowing one of your coworkers jacked you is rough, I was so pissed for a while lol. Then I replaced it with just a cheapo white one, looks good, doesn't work for crap [emoji23]. I'm sure in one of these pics if you look you'll see the black one... RIP antenna

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[ramportin1]

And at some point (I honestly have no clue when lol) I ordered some black N-FAB nerf' s to match my bumper and replace the factory chrome running boards. I honestly don't want steps at all anymore, don't like the looks of steps and my oldest son doesn't need em anymore and my youngest son I can just throw in there.... but the short wife refuses still [emoji58]
I didn't like drilling and mounting through the pinch welds I was planning on rigging the factory brackets to the nerfs but after receiving them and test fitting I realized that wasn't gunna work. So I drilled the holes, taped off and primered that, bought some rubber sleeves from Lowe's and slipped the sleeves over the bolts and through the holes. Done deal

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[MADDOG]

Lovin' all those mods!

 

[ramportin1]

Going through this so far i realized there are a few things i forgot to mention that i did before this point.

#1:So back around the 60k mile time i installed 35W 5k HID's, this is when i found out that you cant just plug HID's into these trucks lol. I knew about the CAN-BUS and ordered upgraded CAN-BUS ballasts and anti flicker harnesses but didnt know about needing resistors, so a quick google search and i was off to buy resistors and it was smooth from there

#2 i taped off the clear half moon reverse section of my tails, scuffed them with some sand paper and tinted with VHT nightshades. i did many coats so they were BLACK. I had read that you did not need to clear coat VHT and even that it could mess up the VHT so i let them dry for like 2 days then installed. They looked AMAZING IMO....... For a short while lol. People that say you dont clear nightshades are dead wrong i dont care what they recommend, it WILL fade and look like crap after a while. Ill post a pic below of the exact same tails, only diff. is about 1 year of time and you will see the huge difference. Went from a gloss black to a rough looking ugly flat cherry. Take it from me and clear coat your nightshades

 

[ramportin1]

I also forgot to mention i removed the wheel spacers when i got the new rims, i didnt want my wheels sticking way out anymore and with the new bumper i had no reason to keep them on

 

[ramportin1]

My rims came with two sets of accents, the red ones which you saw and then chrome painted ones. i knew i will never use the chrome ones so i stripped them down to plastic with scuff-it and painted to match my truck. Really love the look of the paint matched white accents and never seen another truck with it on a rim like mine.
And a rare pic of my old Lexus ISF with Raiden, Loved that car

 

[ramportin1]

Always liked the look of tow mirrors but i also am in the minority i think in saying i really like the small 3rd gen reg mirrors as well, but after many many years i decided i was gunna get tow mirrors and i went with the 4th gen style tows

 

[chrisp2493]

Yeah the tow mirrors look way better

 

[ramportin1]

and FINALLY after years of a big hole in my bumper i finally found some lightbars for my bumper [with the help of a member here .] It took a while as i found out that not only was my lightbar size made for Rigid but also Rigid uses its own mounting bolt sizes and the mounting bolts did not fit through my mounting holes. These were kinda a PITA to install, i had to drill a lot, cut a lot, measure, cut, re measure, find out i was a 1/8" off and re start lol not fun. But eventually got it perfect and dang are they bright! actually bought 4 of them lol so i have 2 spares i also spliced my spot lights into the same relay so all my front off road lights come on with one switch

 

[ramportin1]

Yeah the tow mirrors look way better

lol. I must say i still do like the reg mirrors on these trucks, but i like the look of the tows a hair more

 

[ramportin1]

I believe this is the point where i decided i was gunna start to ditch all my chrome and i started my grill project. i knew for sure i wanted to keep the EPIC cross hair grill because IMO there is no better grill, painted white and do black mesh inserts with a black RAM head so i started with ordering a paintable grill and the inserts i wanted. The grill came from rockauto and the inserts are grillcraft brand i got off amazon due to no shipping it was the cheapest. I did set the grill up on my bumper to see the look of a black grill, not bad but definitely not the paint matched i wanted

 

[ramportin1]

So i removed the inserts from the grill, lined up my new ones and marked the holes id need to drill, drilled out the holes and had my brother meet me at his shop so i could paint it. This is when i found out how off my paint is from brand new PW7 bright white lol, i mixed the paint to PW7 and test sprayed a paint strip, it wasnt even close, i guess 9ish years of neglect will do that . So i had to accept that this was out of my skill level and asked my brother for his help in tinting the PW7. It took about 7 different tint jobs to get his OK then i painted it. Came out flawless! So i let the grill dry for a couple days to be safe, then installed the inserts and put on the truck. Completely changed the look of the truck for sure!

 

[ramportin1]

After some research on here i found people spoke highly of a paint company called automotivetouchup. i only need a small amount of black but i wanted a cool black, something a little unique vs just plain black so i went to there website and ordered some RAM PXR i believe is the code "brilliant black pearl." SUCH a beautiful paint IMO and dang did automotivetouchup do a fantastic job. i sprayed a test strip and held it next to my cousin in laws brilliant black pearl RAM and it was spot on! So i took my dremel and carefully power sanded my emblem down, AP then prime and painted. PW7 bright white back plate with brilliant black pearl RAM head

 

[Demon-HeMi]

After some research on here i found people spoke highly of a paint company called automotivetouchup. i only need a small amount of black but i wanted a cool black, something a little unique vs just plain black so i went to there website and ordered some RAM PXR i believe is the code "brilliant black pearl." SUCH a beautiful paint IMO and dang did automotivetouchup do a fantastic job. i sprayed a test strip and held it next to my cousin in laws brilliant black pearl RAM and it was spot on! So i took my dremel and carefully power sanded my emblem down, AP then prime and painted. PW7 bright white back plate with brilliant black pearl RAM head

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I love the black pearl, i did my first black grill for my 4th gen in it

 

[ramportin1]

I love the black pearl, i did my first black grill for my 4th gen in it

Seriously man, its a beautiful paint!

 

[Demon-HeMi]

Seriously man, its a beautiful paint!

my show truck before it was 100% show, i had smoked tails and instead of regular black we did them in a PXR smoke, they looked awesome, it was a subtle difference but popped in the sun when you got close

 

[ramportin1]

my show truck before it was 100% show, i had smoked tails and instead of regular black we did them in a PXR smoke, they looked awesome, it was a subtle difference but popped in the sun when you got close

This is a friggin great idea. I may just have to buy some new tails just to do this for fun [emoji23]

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[ramportin1]

Now during the new grill process i also decided i was going to do some custom headlights to match, same color scheme bright white a brilliant black pearl. So i ordered some replacement headlights, baked em open and went to work. I never did this before so i did quite a bit of youtubing until i was confident. I then hit up Jeremy and put in a order from retroshop for some morimoto projectors and gatling gun 2.0 shrouds and morimoto H1 5k bulbs. He was super cool and helpful and shipped me everything immediatly. Highly recommend Retroshop as his customer service is top notch.

 

[ramportin1]

ordered more paint from automotivetouchup, sanded everything down, sprayed the AP, then primered everything, then wet sanded, then prep sprayed and started painting. Again bright white and brilliant black pearl with a 2k clear.