upgraded....every thing

[RWherley]

So my truck had some rocker rot, i brought the truck into the shop in January to fix the rockers, no big deal but then......... well then one thing lend to another and i got a little carried away, im still working on it but ive made enough progress to feel like sharing so here we go.

We started by removing the old rocker panels

 

[RWherley]

I couldn't find any replacement rockers i liked, so i had a metal shop make me some custom ones out of 1/8" plate steel, their not exactly SEMA quality fit but theyre pretty close and they sure wont rust out any time soon.

 

[RWherley]

The driver floor was getting a little spotty so we replaced that with a new custom one, the lower section of the cab extender also had some rust holes in it, but the easy fix for that was part of a bed side from a junk truck bed

 

[RWherley]

Ive had 4" exhaust on the truck for years but when i put a Denny's custom drive shaft on the truck, the exhaust to shaft clearance was a little tighter then id like it to be and under hard higher speed turns in 4X4 the larger u-joints would some times nip the exhaust pipe a little, so the answer was to modified the transmission cross member to allow the exhaust pipe to be moved to the right side of the truck more

 

[RWherley]

Its been several years now but i converted the truck to use the radiator and intercooler from a 2nd gen truck as theyre both bigger and offer better cooling, but when i did it i didnt have much money to play with so my parts came from a junk yard, which was fine but now my radiator was leaking and there was room for improvements, so i got a brand new radiator and intercooler from Mishimoto figuring ill just swap them in and be done. Wrong, the new intercooler is 3/4" thicker then the old factory dodge one i had used and there was no way to make it fit in my current radiator support with out a lot of messing around and cutting and welding, so i decided the best thing to do was make a whole new radiator support from scratch

You can see just how tight of a fit my old set up was, it all just barely fit behind the grill

 

[RWherley]

The first step in building the new core support was the base beam that would both carry the weight of the cooling stack and fenders but also bolt the front end down to the frame, after doing some measuring i decided that i wanted somthing 4" wide and a 1 1/2" tall, but having seen the factory ones crack out around the body mounts i wanted to make it stronger too, so i found that a had a long enough section of 1/4" x 4" steel channel around, i then used 1/4" x 4" flat stock to box the open side of the channel to make a tube. then i cut holes in the top and back side of my tube where the body mounts would go, but to regain the strength loss by cutting the holes i welded some thick wall pipe into the holes to help stiffen it back up

 

[RWherley]

 

[RWherley]

The next step was to build the new hoop that will hold the 2 coolers and the hood latch for support, for that I used 2½" X 1½ steel tubing cut and bent to the shape I wanted

 

[RWherley]

with the shape I wanted done, I drilled holes in the tube and welded 3/8" nuts into it so the coolers can bolt right to the main structure of the core support

 

[RWherley]

With the main support done it was time to work on the ends that hold the head lights and front fenders in place. I started with a damaged core support I found in a junkyard

 

[Jdorfmeyer]

Looking good!

 

[RWherley]

Next I welded a section of angle iron towards the top of old core support to help it hold it's shape, then I drilled out all the spot welds and removed all the braces from it until I was left with only the main layer with the outer fender mounts on it

 

[RWherley]

With it down to only the main layer I set it over top my new one that I built to center it and Mark off where I wanted to cut the middle out of the old Dodge part

 

[RWherley]

I then welded another length of angle iron on to make sure that both ends stayed in place then cut the rest of the unneeded metal off and leaving me with only the end pieces I needed

 

[RWherley]

I then welded my 2 still connected end pieces onto my new steel hoop, to mount my lights and support my fenders

 

[RWherley]

To fill in the missing center section where the grill mounts, I cut apart another damage junkyard core support for the filler panel I needed and welded it into place

 

[702 ram w350]

Awesome everything looks killer thanks for taking us on your journey

 

[RWherley]

 

[RWherley]

Because of the lack of availability for the factory AC condenser i had to get a after market one and custom make new mounting brackets for it

 

[RWherley]

I decided that more air flow is a good thing, so i cut vent openings into the valence to let more air flow into the cooling stack .