2006 Dodge Dakota Quad Cab 4wd SLT - "Rumble"

[CR-Venturer]

Not entirely unexpected, but the rear uprights on the bed rack have stress cracked in the same spot as the front ones:

So I enacted a quick and dirty solution with some metal angle I had laying around:



Seems to have completely eliminated any flex in the rear end of the rack, in addition to tying the cross bar together with the uprights again. Hopefully it continues to work as it seems to so far.

 

[CR-Venturer]

Rumble got some new side view mirrors, now with folding action!


I didn't realize when I bought them that these particular ones lack the power folding mechanism :( oh well, not a huge deal, but my truck no longer has power adjustable mirrors.

 

[CR-Venturer]

Update: replaced the flimsy rear rack braces with much beefier ones:

 

[CR-Venturer]

A somewhat sad update: Rumble has recently developed a pretty bad manifold leak, so it's not doing that well on gas. The tires are nearly worn out, and most recently, the rear window mysteriously got completely spider cracked to the point that pieces were falling out of it. This happened in my driveway somehow.

Given how old Rumble is, I've been hesitant to spend money fixing it up. I may yet keep it in a semi-retired state for doing truck stuff, and maybe as a second 4x4 for my oldest kiddo who is now driving to take on trips...

However, due to the extreme generosity of a very close friend of mine who sold it to me for a song, I now have a new and very capable adventure rig to follow in Rumble's treadmarks...

This new rig is extremely different from rumble and thus will require a totally different setup for the kitchen, camping etc. I will probably start a thread for it sometime soon, but just to build the mystery, here's a sneak peek at the extremely ghetto kitchen build in progress: