Hi. I'm Wade from Thoroughbred Diesel and today we're going to be doing a diesel buyer's
guide, and the platform that we're going to be covering in this video is the '98 and a
half to '02 Dodge trucks.
In our diesel's buyer's guide we're going to give you four different aspects of the
truck that we're going to talk about, and what we want to do is we really want to just
talk about the cons of the trucks. We want to give you all of the bad points or the things
that we want you to look out for when you're purchasing one of these vehicles. Now, the
reason why we're doing that, we really want to say this, we're not going to tell you what
to pay for trucks. We are never going to do that in any of these videos that we shoot.
What we do want to tell you is the things that you're going to see on these trucks and
the things that you're going to be dealing with as the future owner of the trucks that
you're looking at, how much money you're going to have to invest in it to be able to get
it to be where you want it to be. So we're going to give you four different aspects of
the '98 and a half to '02 trucks. We're going to talk about interior, we're going to talk
about exterior, we're going to talk about drivetrain, and then we're going to talk about
engine.
So first off, let's talk interior, or exterior of these trucks, excuse me. The exterior of
the Dodges of the second gen models overall, paint on these trucks, that's the first thing
we're going to talk about. Paint, awful. Terrible on these trucks. It is beyond bad. Clear coat
on these vehicles, top of the fenders are usually the first ones to go. I'm sorry, the
top of the fenders, tops of the hoods, very top of the cab. It's just been a bad deal
with these trucks. Any of these high points like this. This truck is my personal vehicle.
My bed caps, clear coat's coming off on it. Clear coat comes off, that just gives you
more chances for rust in the vehicle. That's really the part of the paint.
Rust, as far as the vehicle goes, I guess everybody sees this. Top of the fender wheels,
we usually get rust here. Doors, cab corners, rocker wheels you're going to get a little
bit of rust, especially you guys in northern states. You're getting more salt than we are.
You can see I've got a little bit of rust on these doors here. That can be a bad thing.
Most guys just try to go with doors out of a junk yard or something like that from state
that doesn't have that type of rust, but sometimes if you're going to be doing a full on a restoration
of one of these trucks, might be the better way to go to just go ahead and skin it. That
gets you away from all possibilities of having any hidden rust in there. Exterior, that's
probably the biggest thing that I can think of. Clear coat on the paint is terrible. Rust
is in the usual spots, rock or corners, doors, so on. So that's pretty well commonplace to
find on the exteriors this truck. So if you're wanting to do a full restoration or this is
just not your jam, you can't stand the clear coat being peeled off a truck like that, you
got to make sure that you understand to work that into your equation.
Now let's talk about interior. I'm going to tell you right now, this being my truck, it's
not the cleanest truck on the planet, but I want to show you some of the things that
happen on the interior. These Dodges, if you're a second gen owner you know the dashboard.
There is a hole in my dash that is big enough for a cat to fall in. It's like that on every
daggone Dodge. I don't care who you are, what you've got, what you do with it, the truck
has lived inside its entire life, you're going to have a hole in your dash eventually. Seat's
ripping. Let's go over to the driver's side, Adam.
Driver's side seat, really, really bad about ripping. So again, another thing, if you're
going to want to do an interior, this is usually where you get your rip point. My truck's no
different than that. My center console had a wear spot in it so if you lean on that,
that's something that you're going to see pretty regularly, whatever. Doors, on the
trucks that have the doors on the quad cab vehicles... They did one opening door and
then they went to a full four opening doors. Neither one of my doors open. They get rust
down in the latches and you'll have the latch hang on them. Just causes a lot of problems.
That's just a common thing. You've got to break that down, get all the latch mechanism
out of it and be able to do it. So that's going to take you few hours of your time,
couple of hours of your time to be able to fix it and get it where you want it.
One other thing I actually want to talk about on exterior of these trucks, the trucks that
have aluminum wheels, these aluminum wheels on these trucks... I guess this will actually
kind of be our kickoff into drivetrain. The aluminum wheels on these trucks are absolute
junk. They crack all the time and you've got a tire leak. So if you get a low tire on one
of these trucks and you look over it, you don't have a nail in tire, you bet your butt
it's going to be a cracked wheel. I don't know how many wheels I've put on this truck.
Because one day my idea for this truck is I want to do a full restoration on it. I want
it to look just like it looked the day it came off the showroom floor. This is a Sport.
It's an actual Sport. It was purchased as a Sport. This isn't a fake Sport with fake
bumpers on it. If you don't know the difference between a Sport and a non-Sport in these trucks,
the Sports had painted bumpers on them. They had a different grill as well. This is an
actual Sport. I want to restore it as a Sport someday, so I'm trying to keep same jive on
the wheels.
You can see the rust on these. I've got this door here is getting a little bit of rust
on it. Bottom of the driver door's getting a little bit of rust. So yeah, that pretty
well covers all of the negatives of interior and exterior. One more other thing on interior
I want to talk about. Gas gauge and your cluster, the fuel gauge on these trucks they never
work. [inaudible 00:06:18], they never, never work. So that's going to be something that
you're going to have a fight with. [inaudible 00:06:23] unit on the tank, had to put a new
one of the sensors inside of the float and then that'll fix that. So you can pick those
up from local Dodge dealer.
Now, I guess let's talk drivetrain. drivetrain on these trucks, Dana axles, front and back,
you're not going to run into a lot of problems with that as far as the axles go. They're
pretty beefy, different selections of gears through these trucks. So if you're interested
in fuel economy and you don't want to really have to regear and you want to search for
a gear set, check to see what gears are possible to get with your platform there and maybe
try to look for those if you're searching for one. But like I said, Dana, front and
back on them. Good stuff. You really don't run into a lot of problems there. Drive axles,
no real big concerns there. And talk transmissions, obviously automatic transmissions in these
trucks, it's kind of hit and miss. It just depends on how it's been treated. Everybody
knows the horror stories on Dodge transmission, so if you get a transmission, make sure when
you're driving it, you're looking for things like flare shifts slipping in the shifts,
wanting to hunt for gears, things like that, audible noises if you hear it. If you hear
an audible noise in an automatic transmission, you don't want to go that way.
Standard shift transmissions, these trucks came with either five or six speed. Six speed,
you kind of want to just kind of make sure that you watch on the synchronizers when you're
going through shifts, going into other gears. You hear grinding, that's a synchronizer issue.
Make sure you had full clutch depression before you jump to that conclusion, but if you did,
you still hear a grinding, that's a synchro problem inside of the transmission and it's
pretty common. Five speeds, the five speeds are a little bit of a different animal. The
five speeds had a really bad problem with the fifth year nuts. You hear all the horror
stories about. Face value, that failure's really not that expensive of a fix, but it
depends on how much damage that it did. So you've kind of got to work with that. You
might want to check out the transmission itself, look underneath the truck, see if the transmission
looks like it's new, see if it's been replaced or anything like that.
As far as clutch goes, sound on clutches, if it's loud, if it's rattly and don't automatically
think that it's a throw-out bearing. We hear that a lot. Truck could have a dual disc clutch
in it. If it's got a dual disc clutch in it, you could've some performance upgrades that
have been done to the truck, so be aware of that when you're purchasing as well.
Now, I guess let's talking about the front end of the truck, and I'm going to let Adam
get his camera situated here. And in fact what we're going to probably do is we're probably
just going to trade out and I'm going to take the camera. And what I want to do is I'm just
going to show you a real quick and easy way to look for failures in the front end of a
Dodge because this is another thing that you've got to take into account when you're buying
one of these trucks. You want a good driving experience with this thing. My old truck,
really bad need of a track bar. It wanders all over the road. I'm going to show you that
with the camera and I'm going to show you how to check for it. This is another thing.
If you're at a place and you're taking a look at the truck, just turn the key on on the
truck so you can move the steering wheel back and forth and just take your steering wheel
and move it like this. Just like this right here. Okay? When you're doing that, you do
it and have somebody else watch for it. Adam, I'm going to take the camera from here real
quick.
TV timeout. We're doing a camera shift right now. While you guys are waiting on us to readjust
for the camera positions, jump down in the comments, write to us, tell us what you found
on your VP 44 truck when you were shopping for him or any of your VP 44 truck horror
stories that you want other guys to know about.
All right, go ahead, Adam. Okay, you can see all the movement in that track bar right there.
That's really, really bad, so that's going to be a couple hundred bucks. Tire rods and
whatnot need to be addressed. Of course, ball joints are very, very bad in these trucks.
We've showed you how to look at ball joints a couple of different times. But yeah, you
definitely want to make sure that you do that. And again, it's another thing to take into
consideration when you're looking at purchasing a vehicle, know that as far as the drivetrain
goes there, you're going to have to look at replacing some stuff. I really need to get
that track bar fixed. That thing's squeaking for crying out loud. It's a bad deal.
All right. Now let's talk engine. The mighty 5.9 Cummins. You're really not going to have
problems, per se, out of the mechanical portions of this engine, I guess let's just call it
the rotating assembly. Seems to be everything else that's on these trucks, so let's let's
keep it in the '98 to '02 talking points. VP 44, look at the VP 44 check to see if it
looks like if it's been replaced. If it's been replaced, that might be a good thing
if it looks like it was a very recent thing. Manifold on these trucks, really, really bad
about cracking. We've talked about that a couple of different times. You can look for
soot trails along the manifold there. Usually there's a really, really good sign of telling
you that you've got a manifold crack or it's a definite sign of a manifold crack. Look
for an aftermarket turbocharger like that right there. When you drive it if the truck
seems laggy, probably because they've got an aftermarket turbo on here. Guys love to
throw HX 40s on these trucks. Nothing wrong with an HX 40. Runs good up top, but down
low it's very, very laggy if it's not fueled correctly. Yeah, and oil leaks. Oil leaks
on these trucks, just another day in the life of a 5.9 Dodge.
Tappet cover, my tappet cover leaks really, really bad. We got a leak at the vacuum's
pump as well. So driver's side of the engine traditionally is where all of your oil leaks
are going to be. Really, really watch for that.
Crankcase.
Yeah, crankcase. The front seal on the crankcase, not leaking on this one because we just did
that video on it not too long ago. But again, these are all things that cost money and things
that you have to fix, so that should go into your budget of what you're going to spend
on a truck for sure.
You know what? Let's talk about the 53 block. 53 blocks, you hear people talk about that
all the time. That is a block that was made in Mexico for these 5.9 Motors and they are
very, very bad about cracking parallel to the length of the motor running front to back.
They get a crack in there and then you'll start getting a coolant leak that'll go along
that side of the engine. I think it's usually the passenger side that cracks. So how do
you find out if you have a 55 block or not? Adam, let's go down here and we'll show them.
On the block right here, I'm on the passenger side of the truck, you can see there's a stamped
number. It's almost directly under the oil cooler plate. This truck is a 55 block. You
can see right there. The 53's traditionally are the ones that you want to look out for.
They are the ones that crack. If you see that, the block will, like I said, crack parallel
to the way the block lies from front to back. You can almost see the coolant down through
there when you go to look at them.
If a truck's been rode hard really bad, of course, just like everything else, start the
truck, get it up to operating temperature, take the cap off of it, look for the amount
of blow by this. If you've got a ton of blow by, you got a mechanical issue, needs to be
addressed for sure. Oil leaks, and that's really pretty much it. You just don't traditionally
have injector problems on these trucks or things like that. Drive it and look for overheating.
If you've got an overheating situation, that is another thing with the 24 valves. You have
a lot of these trucks that will have problems with head gaskets cracking inside the head
that'll usually lead to an overheating problem. If you can take a truck and just take it for
a day and tell the person you're serious about buying it, but you want to make sure that
you're not getting into something that's a little bit outside of your budget, take it
for the whole day if they'll let you and drive it and make sure you keep it at operating
temperature. Don't beat on another man's vehicle, but take it, drive it, and get it up to operating
temperature. That's when all the bad's going to come out. So that's it on this. This video's
kind of long.
Lift pump.
Lift pump. Exactly. The Achilles heel of the 24 valves. Look for it. If it's on the side
of the block and the truck hasn't been converted to something else, or in the tank pump, that's
going to be something that you're going to have to do right out of the gate is lift pump.
However, if the truck's got an aftermarket lift pump on it, an AirDog Fast, Fuelab, any
of those, BD, anything like that, that's a good sign that you've got a healthy VP 44
pump because we know that the VP 44 has had constant pressure at it the whole time. That
is a good thing. So that's one thing that you won't have to buy right out of the gate,
so yeah. And that's it.
So a lot to talk about on these trucks. Honestly, near and dear to our hearts. VP 44's is what
we do here at Thoroughbred Diesel. This truck platform is really our niche. Several of us
here at shop drive these trucks every day. I'm probably the worst one because I'm just
not a take care of the truck kind of guy. I'd drive them until they break and then I
fix it and keep driving again. So you guys that are perfectionists about stuff like that
and you all want to work on stuff, you've got to take that into consideration. So I'm
Wade, Thoroughbred Diesel. If you have a question about this video or any of our other videos,
please give us a call. Like and subscribe to our channel. Happy truck hunting.