1994 Dodge Ram 1500 4x4 Project Jinxy - Highjinx

7. The front axle also had an axleshaft length issue on the passenger side. Mac from Superior Axle tracked down the right chromoly 30-spline axle and slipped it into our truck just hours before our first off-roading trip.

8. That first off-roading trip was fun, and the truck was working excellently, but the rear pinion was turned up just a bit too much.

9. While on the throttle through some bumps, the rear springs wrapped and oscillated enough to break the rear 1350 yoke apart. The 1350 Dana pinion yokes are not the strongest, but the spring perches were welded at a bad angle making the rear axle wrap too easily.

10. Luckily, the rear driveshaft survived and all we needed was a new U-joint and pinion yoke. This time around, we dropped some coin on a billet forged 1350 Dana 60 pinion yoke to make sure we didn't break it again. I'll still have to turn and re-weld the rear spring perches to keep the axle from wrapping so terribly again.

11. A snow wheeling trip told me of the inadequacies of my tranny cooling system. We had a ton of fun that day, but I overheated the transmission twice and the fluid was absolutely cooked.

12. In hind sight, I should have known better than to run no less than twice the normal cooling capacity that someone else would. David Kennedy of Diesel Power magazine was amazed how fast we could melt snow on the tranny cooler. I'll be adding another cooler with a fan built onto it shortly.

13. I've gotten a lot of questions about the Parnelli Jones Dirt Grip tires (that you can pick up at National Tire and Wheel or Desert Rat, by the way). So far, they have been excellent. I am wearing them out a little faster than I'd like to, but there is still a lot of life left on the tires. They've worked well in the rain on the highways and get excellent traction in the mud and snow for such a nicely-driving street tire.

14. This single cab truck really is nice to drive almost everywhere. The visibility while driving single cab is excellent, and it's extremely maneuverable off-road and in traffic. Unfortunately, the fuel economy of this modified Magnum V-8 is terrible, and I plan to try to address that a little more in the future. Also, you'll notice that I learned a lesson about keeping really expensive HID light bolts tightened, and hopefully I'll be able to get some parts to fix the middle one. I still haven't cut the front bumper fiberglass (probably because I haven't hit it yet) and I'm still running a temporary metal plate where I need to put a real skidplate (soon).

15. The Corbeau seats are absolutely awesome, and I am so glad that Off Road Evolution adapted them to my original seat brackets so I could still have power seats and keep my middle-seat console.

16. I love having the Power Tank mounted in the bed of the truck. In the front corner, it hasn't gotten in the way of anything I've tried to shove in the bed, and it's been so valuable when it's really cold outside-I'm always the first to be able to hop back in my truck while my friends with air compressors are still struggling to get back up to street pressures.

17. The front suspension works really well. It flexes well, and the arms are just long enough to give a smooth ride and unbinding travel, while not so long that they get hung up on rocks. I'm really glad I ordered the chrome bodies for the front Fox coilovers, as they resist corrosion and are much easier to keep clean. The Off Road Evolution crew would also like me to point out that I specifically asked for the sway bar links to be angled as they are, and that it be known that they do not like the way I wanted this set up. Their reasoning is that the sway bar's rate does not work properly when the links are angled. But I had some method in my planning and a lot of luck. The 1.25-inch Speedway sway bar I got was too stuff for this truck, but not when the rate was diminished with the links sitting sideways. No, I did no special math to figure this out, and instead just got really lucky as it seems to work great on the street and in the dirt.

18. The rear bumpstop got a little mangled on the driver side of the truck. The U-bolt was just a couple millimeters too far over and ate the end of the shaft up pretty well. It still works though, and we fixed this by just cutting the U-bolts down to the nuts.

19. I did have one too many good off-roading trips for this front end. The front Dana 44 axle bent more quickly than I would have liked it to, and I shortly destroyed a front unit bearing after that. I still have faith in newer unit bearing designs, but obviously the one on this '94-to-'01 truck just isn't the right way to go. ' The truck is currently awaiting a new front axle.