Newbie from NY

This truck went through hell and back before it was in my possession!

My closest friend's brother, Ricky didn't want to put the effort into fixing it. He was constantly working all the time 45 minutes away, 10-12 hour shifts, mainly overnights... And felt no desire to fix it, but buy new and ready to drive.

His mother, Joann had drove it through the winter. It was about the biggest snowstorm we encountered last Winter, and she slid on a patch of black ice and ran into a guardrail on the driver side. The damage was scary enough for her to even say to park it and not worry about it! She wanted to scrap it...

So, long story short (too late), the truck is now mine to fix & doll up and bring back to life to use as a daily driver.

It's a 2003 Dodge Dakota SXT, V6, 3.9L, 4x4, regular 6 1/2 ft. cab, manual seats, doors, windows, locks, etc. No cruise control, no nothing... Completely stripped out!

Almost 140,000 miles on it when I got it. Not quite sure what the MPG is off the top of my head. I do know it's not where it should be for combined highway/city driving. But what do you expect with that many miles on it? Lol

Downside? She pulls to the right just enough to piss me off when I'm driving down the road and I have to keep my steering wheel turned to the left on a straight road to prevent heading off into a ditch and totaling what's left of the truck! Lol... Easy enough fix though.

Seeing that it's going to need a tune up. Might... might see an extra 1-1.5 MPG increase after. (Wishful thinking)

The damage was taken directly into the driver side headlight, shattering it all over the pavement.

Bumper & grill are just completely out of the question on trying to fix!

The bumper had to be cut out of the tire for it to be drove home seeing that it was folded right in when we got it.

Grill was almost embedded in the radiator.

Radiator's got a leak in it somewhere (needs replaced)

Front driver side fender's pushed up and shoved back into the door so when you open the door, it squeaks something fierce! Lol

From what I was told, it received new shocks, struts, rotors, pads, breaks all around. But it looked like it was highly neglected when it came up to doing an oil change. The oil in the poor thing was as dark as what was poured in new!

Which is a duh simply because it was 3,000 miles overdue for it's services! (not my fault, I swear!)

Plenty to keep busy with fixing on this truck

And much more that escapes my mind at the moment!

Pics below are taken before the sh*t got ripped off, so now my hood is allowed to fly up on me if for some dumb *** reason I decide to take it on the road. Not happening, however

Pretty bad when I had only put 50+ miles on it before I had to park it until it was fixed due to what I said in an earlier post about the temperature gauge...
:wack:
Lucky me!