FAQ

Custom Leather

I ordered custom blue and tan leather, to replace the SLT premium cloth. I chose blue and tan, to compliment the beautiful blue exterior, and somewhat tie in with the "taupe" interior. The tan is very similar in color to the headliner, though your eye doesn't necessarily pick this up. The blue leather is not an exact match of the exterior blue, but I chose this on purpose, as the exterior blue would be too loud inside the truck.

Overall the result is as good as I had hoped, particularly given how difficult it was to imagine the combination installed on such a large scale. I think the embroidered Ram's Head really came out nice.

This pic shows the front seats. This pic shows the back seats. And this pic shows the blue of the seats, in comparison to the blue of the door panels.

Westin Step Bars

I installed the bars in a little less than 90 minutes. The instructions were found to be very accurate. The pictures (all black and white) show enough detail to understand what is needed with each step. My only confusion came with the term "rocker panel". This refers to the lower part of the fenders/body, not anywhere on the frame. The kit came complete with all necessary parts and hardware.

Tools you should have include:

• 18 and 19mm sockets (note 18mm is not commonly found in most socket sets)
• 9/16" socket
• 9/16" wrench
• Ratchet
• Torque wrench

Start time was around 5:30 pm. First, carriage bolts from the frame into the cab were removed. Then the new brackets are bolted into this position, using new longer carriage bolts. Rubber grommets are removed from the body panels (rocker panels), and a brace is mounted between new bracket and the body panels. Finally the bars are bolted to the bracket. Tip: Remove the plastic from the bars after they are mounted, to avoid scratching them during the install. Torque everything to spec and repeat on the other side.

The first side took me 60 minutes, while the second side only took 30. I did use an air ratchet, along with a regular one, to speed things along a bit. Don't foget to use a torque wrench. 65 ft-lbs on those carriage bolts is more than you'll expect it to be.

Prodigy Brake Controller

Details coming soon!

Bed Mounted Trailer 7-wire Trailer Plug

Locating the trailer plug where it is pictured, makes drilling the 2" whole much easier, as there is only a single wall of bed at this spot. Forward of here, there's more steel to get through. As well, routing the wires from here to the stock wiring harness is a short, but simple run. The use of a bi-metal whole saw will make the drilling a bit easier.

When splicing into the stock wiring, here are what each colored wire does:

This job was compeleted over a series of days, not hours. Total time was at least 8 hrs, if not more. You start by laying out the rails as directed (in my case 28 1/2" from the rear of the truck). Using the base of the hitch as a guide, you locate the front rail as well. Mark the location of the bolt holes, and then drill four 5/8" holes through the bed. Unlike most fifth wheel hitches, this one only uses 4 bolts through the bed, not 8. The two front bolts go not only through the bed, but through the top of the box frame.

I worked the front rail first, and I'm glad I did. It takes the longest and most patience. Cut through the sheet metal cover the box tube that the bed sits on and expose the entire box tube. Insert the filler pipe into the box tube. Now, drill a 1 1/4" hole in the frame, to gain access to apply the tapped plate that will act as nut for the front bolt. With this complete, the hardest part starts. Put the front bolt through the rail, spacers, bed, filler pipe, frame, and thread into the tapped plate. It took me 2 hrs to get this lined up and threaded on there. 2 hrs on each side! I learned nothing from the first side. It's just plain a bitch to do. The method I used sucked, and probably should not be repeated. Having a second set of hands would have probably been really nice here. Click here to see a pic of the pipe, 1 1/4" hole, and frame of this front bolt.

Once the fronts are on, the rears will seem like a piece of cake. Bolt the L bracket to the bed rail, and position the bracket so it's up against the frame. Use the bracket as a guide for drilling the two 17/32" holes into the frame. Fish the collard bolts, using the supplied wire, from the 1 1/4" access hole, out through the frame and bracket. Tip: To keep the bolt from falling back into the frame, only hook the last few threads of the bolt with the supplied wire. Once the bolt is exposed through the bracket, use a small piece of wire to trap the bolt to the bracket, almost like applying a C-Clip to it. Spin nut on, until the bolt collar is pressing against the frame. An impact wrench is probably going to be needed to properly seat this bolt into the frame - either that - or some serious wrenching. click here to see this bracket installed. Trust me, all of that was 10 times easier than the front bolts.

With these 8 bolts installed, the difficult part is complete. Be sure to torque all of the bolts properly. 130+ ft-lbs is a lot of torque that's needed on the main carriage bolts! Then, put the hitch into the rails, sit back, and drink a beer...or 3! For $200, I could have paid to get it installed. Instead, I bought 3 expensive drill bits and a Sawzall, and spent a bunch of time in the bed and under the bed of my Ram. The frame, I must say, is a thing of beauty now that Dodge has started powder coating them, instead of wax coating them.

Here is a pic of the holes that were cut from the frame and bed during the installation of the hitch and plug. For all of the holes, good bits, at slow speeds (under 500 rpms) makes it easier. As well, sometimes drilling a small (3/16") pilot hole helps speed things along.

I decided that I wanted to have a DVD-based navigation unit. Nav units that are DVD-based have the entire United States on one DVD, enabling you to enter a route that goes all across the US. Importantly, Arizona and Utah/New Mexico are on 2 different CD's when the nav is CD-based, which would require me to purchase additional CD's and then switch them out mid-trip.

Once I had decided that a Nav unit was required, that meant I would need a head unit with an LCD screen. I also wanted to be able to play DVD's for the kids in the back seat, and thus headrest video monitors came into the picture. I had the Boston Acoustics speakers laying around from the VW Jetta I had owned, but they need additional power, so an amp is certainly needed.

I settled in on the following list of items, which have been primarily purchased off ebay. For the DVD source, we'll use our portable Panasonic DVD player, which has a flip up screen for the front passenger.

• Pioneer AVH-6400CD In-Dash CD Player with 6.5" LCD Screen
• Pioneer AVIC-9DVD DVD-based navigation system
• 2 Clarion VMA6593 6.5" 16:9/4:3 Selectable LCD Color Headrest Monitors
• Clarion VA700 video distribution and amplifier
• Boston Acoustics ProSeries 6.5" Component front speakers
• Boston Acoustics RM6 Coaxial rear speakers
• Xtant A48 8" 4 ohm subwoofer in custom sealed cabinet under the rear seat
• MTX 895 5 channel amplifier
• 600 watt power inverter to power the DVD player or a PlayStation 2
• Interconnects: Stinger, Streetwires, and KnuKonceptz

I've installed a bunch of it now, and as of 6/29/03, have the following complete:

• Head unit is wired to the stock wiring harness, and playing over the stock speakers. Pic.
• Nav unit is installed and working. It is mounted in the cubby under the front center seat.
• Cables which need to be run under the carpet (video, audio, power), are all run.
• Video monitors are installed in the headrests, including the video amplifier to support them. Pic.

As you can see here, a lot of stuff needed to be removed from the truck, to gain the access I need to run the cables and mount all of the components. Here is a picture of some of what was removed and lying on the ground beside the truck for the better part of a week. In total, I think I spent close to 20 hours on the project, and likely still have at least another 6-10 hours more, to complete the amp and speaker install. That will need to wait until at least August, I return from my sabbatical trip.

Here and here are pictures of the head unit monitor showing navigation information while the rear headrest monitors play the movie Spy Kids 2. The kids really like this setup, as do the parents.

Here is a picture of the tools I used. Really there weren't that many, and even fewer could have been used. Many of the panels are just applied with simple screens (the 3 extra that forgot where they lived are shown). The center panel, which has the 2 inner vents, and heating controls, have only one screen holding it in, which is located atop the garbage bag hook. With that screw out, the entire center section can be removed, with a little prying.

The nav unit is connected to the head unit via the "optional" Pioneer CD-RGB600 26-Pin RGB cable. I don't know how this cable can reasonably be considered optional, but whatever. I suppose it has to do with the 2 other ways it could have been connected, and for which none of those cables were likewise provided (3 options, none supplied). Besides this cable, the mic input, and the gps antenna input, The nav unit has quite a number of extra wiring hook-ups. There's a hookup for the parking brake, vehicle speed, reverse light, illumination, acc, power, ground, mute, etc. Of these, I tapped the power and ground, from the wiring harness for the power seats (always on power). I tapped the acc from the head unit acc. I connected the mute to the head unit. I connected the parking brake wire to chassis ground (allows menu access while driving, not just when the parking brake is applied). I left the reverse, speed, and illumination wires unconnected. They aren't absolutely necessary, and the nav seems to be working fine without them.

The head unit also has a connection for parking brake and reverse light. Neither are currently connected, although I plan on connecting the parking brake wire with a switch to ground. Doing so would enable the driver to watch the video from the portable DVD player, when the switch is thrown. The reverse light hookup is necessary, if you want a reverse enabled camera to activate when you are in reverse. I played with the feature, via a switch, and it looks pretty cool, if you had a reverse camera, but otherwise, I can't find a use for it.

The only real problem I had, was with the video monitor output from the head unit. The head unit puts out a very, very weak video signal for the rear monitors. Fortunately, I found a vague install tip from the forums at the12volt.com, which mentioned something about grounding the video wire. Though not exactly certain what this meant, I played around with a ground wire and the video input wire, and found that if a ground wire was touching the outside metal of the input video RCA to the head unit, the picture cleaned up substantially. It appears that the Pioneer head unit doesn't supply enough ground to this input, a problem which several people at 12volt were complaining about. To fix the problem, I tapped into the head unit's wiring harness ground on one end, and simply press fit the other end into the video RCA, such that the ground wire was compressed into the connection. This simple fix has substantially cleaned up the video. It's not quite perfect, but it's very, very good. During my diagnosis of the problem, I connected a monitor directly to the video output of the head unit, and was appalled at the low quality of the video signal (you could make out no discernable picture). Fortunately, the Clarion video amplifier does a marvelous job of taken relative garbage in, and making it dang near perefect.

Steve's to-do list:

• Valve body and torque converter from DTT
• TST uprate computer with built in gauges
• York loadlok bed liner (yes, a drop-in)

To email Steve about his truck, email Stephen.D.Belt@intel.com.