Red Dodge Diary

I mentioned that I will be doing a few upgrades, mods to the 97 Dodge Ram CTD. Well, first off I would like to have the body brought back to “nice”. The original red paint is rather horrible, where it exists at all. There are a few dents too, nothing catastrophic, and being a north Texas truck, no rust. I’m not much of a body man, so I’ll have to farm that out.

Interior wise, we’ve installed new factory style seat covers which match the original materials and color very nicely. They will certainly do until such time that I may want to have the seats professionally redone.

Picture of a cracked dodge dash

Yet another quirk or “engineering disaster” dealing with these trucks is the propensity of the plastic dashes to crack. I don’t mean little bitty hairline cracks, although they may start off that way, I’m talking arctic cravasses, and literal sections falling out. I always kept my 2001 dash shined up with a popular “protectant”. The last time I applied it, I heard a pop, and that was it. Crack city. Stay off crack my friends.  When I got the 97 truck, it had already cracked severely, with pieces having fallen out.

Aftermarket to the rescue!!!

There are companies that sell custom molded dash covers. I located several online and ordered one. Wow! That thing fits beautifully and looks like an original dash. You basically prefit the cover over your gnarly old dash, trimming a little here or there to finalize the fit. They provided a tube of adhesive with instructions on where and how much to glue. Take your time, let the adhesive set up, and you’re done.

I’ll say that I did a little more prepwork than was probably needed. I repaired the old broken plastic dash first, by using a dremel and carving little “V”‘s all along the cracks, refitting the missing pieces, and filling the carved V’s with epoxy. I then profiled the epoxy to match the proper contours of the dash, by hand sanding and dremel sanding drums. I have to say, I could have masked and painted the dash at this point alone and it would have looked pretty good.

Summary: Go for the dash cover, you’ll be glad you did.

I’ve been bad. Remember me talking about the “killer dowel pin”?  I haven’t done that job yet, so I am risking potential engine damage. I should have done that first thing. Just a friendly reminder for all of us.  I haven’t said much about mods yet. I’ll get there, sorry.