2009 Dodge Ram 1500 Project

Our first 4-Wheel & Off-Road show truck in the history of the magazine (or at least in recent history) is just about finished. We've been building Project Black Sheep, an '09 Dodge 1500 Ram over the past three issues, and with this installment, we're wrapping it up. But let's not forget that a show truck from this magazine is still more go than show. In fact, this truck will quickly make it into the dirt, sand, and mud just as soon as we sneak it out of the show circuit it's destined to run.

In the past issues we told you how great the Dodge rode with its coil-sprung rear suspension and powerful Hemi engine during the purchase and drive of the truck home from Detroit. Then last month we upgraded the suspension with new Edelbrock shocks, coils, and air bumpstops. We upgraded the rear suspension links to chromoly units from Spidertrax with Currie Johnny Joints. The new suspension will lift the truck to clear 37-inch Mickey Thompson Tires on Pro Comp Extreme Alloy wheels. To add even more to the great ride, we upgraded the interior with leather seat covers from Mopar and Katzkin.

This month we add some tube work, a few more Mopar amenities, and a super-slick paintjob by KC Customs in Santa Rosa, California. The truck may seem finished, but in reality we already have some other upgrades in the works. But that is stuff for better off-road performance, which you will see in a future issue. If you want to check out the truck in real life, it will be on display at the Moab Easter Safari, the Tierra del Sol Desert Safari, and other events we'll list on our website.

1. We removed the front bumper of the Black Sheep to help make room for the bigger tires and improve the approach angle, but this left it looking pretty funny. We also needed a place for some big off-road lights and a good front skidplate. Randy Ellis Design in Phoenix has been building awesome 4x4s for years, and we recruited them to help us outfit the front of our truck with a desert/utility-style front bumper. First we headed to Industrial Metal Supply for some DOM tubing, and then we started building with steel plates coming up off the framerails. The headlights needed substantial protection so we added tubing that wrapped around the corners of the truck but still allowed plenty of approach angle in front of the tires. This truck isn't designed as a rockcrawler, but it will see trails, and you never know what type of obstacle might pop up in front of it.

2. This bumper required a front skidplate to help deflect rocks or other minor trail obstacles from the front axle, so we continued the lightweight theme by using a 1/2-inch-thick sheet of light but sturdy UHMW plastic rather than the common aluminum sheet.	3. One style feature we like that Ellis uses on many of his personal bumpers is to wrap the front of the steel plate with narrow steel strips. This strengthens the plate similar to an I-beam feature.	4. The front bumper protects the grille and offers us plenty of mounting space for four new Genesis HID lights from Lightforce. These 8-inch lights will pierce the darkness, and because they are lightweight with their polycarbonate lenses and composite body, they won't tax the front suspension.
5. One use for this truck is to haul a smaller quad out to the dunes for use during photo shoots or events. However, because our Dodge is a crew cab it has a very short 5-foot 7-inch bed, making it nearly impossible to fit a quad big enough for a grown up. Randy Ellis and his team came up with an ingenious method for not only fitting our Kawasaki KFX 450R, but also leaving room for our fullsize spare tire, Mopar ramps for loading the quad, and other miscellaneous gear. First we installed a plate with a threaded receiver under the bed and located the spare on the floor using a Day Star spare-tire mount.	6. A tubular framework was built over the tire that acts as a ramp, pushing the front of the quad up and allowing the tailgate to be closed behind the rear tire. On the bedsides we had installed some Mopar track tie-down systems, and the Ellis crew built some custom brackets to use those tracks to hold the Mopar ramps.	7. Since the ramps have the front tires of the quad dangerously close to the rear window, a bed bar was fabricated to keep the quad safe. It also works as a front tie-down point. Tabs were also installed to wire in two smaller LightForce 140 Lance HID lights. These will be wired in with the factory bed light, making them great for backing up trailers, loading the quad, or setting up camp on a moonless trail.
8. Sorry, no chrome here. All the bumpers and bed-cage work were powdercoated black at Desert Powdercoating in Phoenix. Powdercoating gives the tubework a clean finish that will also hold up to the abuse of the trail.	9. No show truck is complete without a custom paintjob, and once again we recruited our favorite painters, Bryan Kinney and his team at KC Customs in Santa Rosa, California. These guys put the hammer down and worked around the clock to get our award-winning truck painted in time for the show. The first step was to tear off all the body moldings and sanding the truck to prep it for paint.	10. Removing the factory decals, fender flares, and logos from the body left a messy, sticky glue on the paint. KC Customs uses a buffing wheel made from a material similar to a pencil eraser without damaging the paint underneath.
11. Once prepped and masked off, the truck got some custom tape work done by Jerry Wolfe. Wolfe and Kinney work together on special projects, combining their years of automotive and motorcycle paint and design experience. Our vision for the truck involved steel panels riveted to the side in a patchwork quilt of pseudo-armor.	12. Because of the many shades of silver needed for the armor and the red highlight needed to accent our logo, the truck would eventually receive multiple coats through the long days and nights in the paint booth.	13. In between each coat there was more masking and taping. Each panel of the armor needed a different tint of silver to stand apart from the panel next to it.
14. Removing the masking paper is like tearing open your biggest present on Christmas morning. Think the truck looks finished? Still to come were hours of air brushing in the small rivets and shadow of each panel, spraying the clearcoat to finish the truck, and then all the buffing and reassembly of the body panels. As we said before, we don't usually pride ourselves with building show trucks, but this truck garnered so much attention at the SEMA show we were amazed. The paintjob had onlookers gawking and the simple, yet bold, tube work sealed the deal.	15. The truck looks finished, but we've already come up with a handful of future upgrades so don't think the old Black Sheep is going away. We'll keep you posted about the gearing, transfer case, and axle upgrades, and maybe even some airbags to give this Ram some support when towing a full load of toys out to the desert. Stay tuned.