I'm treading on dangerous ground. My daily driver that I use for commuting to work every morning is becoming a "project" vehicle. Not only that, it will be a project in full view of the magazine staff and readers, so every pitfall and screw up will be potential ammo every day at work. Like I said, it's dangerous ground. But if I have some kind of catastrophic engine or transmission failure, I might have to get a rental car, take a bus, or even (gulp) rely on my co-workers to get me to the office. That being said, what the heck, what's life worth without some excitement? It wasn't always looking this way though. My truck started life like many other diesels do-intended to be a work horse and a work truck.
After working at a number of dead-end jobs, I was ready for a big change and decided to go into business for myself hauling cars from auctions to dealers as well as for private parties. My run was to be from the car-cramped Los Angeles up to Northern California, where cars that people will throw away down here can still fetch a few grand. When doing a business plan, I figured I could save $1,000 a month or more by purchasing an older used vehicle rather than buying a new one and financing. For someone just starting out, that would be a huge help to get on the right side of profits. I knew I needed a dualie for the weight, and I wanted a turbo for the towing power, so I set out on the hunt.
I needed a dualie for the amount of weight I was going to pull. Anything else would have been very hard pressed. | 
The interior was (and still is) in pretty good shape. A pleasant surprise for a truck creeping up on 300,000 miles! | 
Dodge wasn't shy about its grille design on the '94-and-later Rams, and I figured the running lights would be an added bonus; I'd get out of the way of this thing, especially if it was towing a 51-foot trailer! |
The vehicle I found was a '97 Dodge Ram 3500 2WD dualie with the 12-valve Cummins and 250,000 miles. I saw it on eBay, and, oddly enough, it was only 10 miles away from where I lived in San Diego, so I drove to take a look. The mileage was a little high, but I had talked to numerous Cummins owners who had 350K or more on their trucks, along with one fellow who had a little under 800,000 on his, so I figured I had a little time left before a tranny or engine rebuild. The truck also had a salvage title, but since I never planned on getting rid of it, I didn't care about that either. It was surprisingly clean, which I tallied as a bonus because appearance when hauling expensive cars was something I needed to look for. At some point during the truck's life, an alarm had been poorly installed, and because the truck was a police auction vehicle, they had just jury-rigged a wire to start it. So the starting procedure was that you would turn the key, pop the hood, get out, open the hood, and then touch the wire to the positive terminal to start it. While this might scare some, I had driven my fair share of clunkers, so I decided it was OK and decided that it was probably just an isolated problem rather than something like a bad wiring harness. The truck drove smooth, seemed to have enough power, and shifted well during the test drive, so I risked making an offer. Although the truck had some mechanical and cosmetic problems, it was a few grand cheaper than anything else I saw, and I figured that money could go into a transmission rebuild. In the end, I drove home my first diesel pickup to the tune of $5,000.
With how much I was planning on pulling, I had a Reese 30,000-pound-capacity hitch installed and a steel plate put in the bed to reinforce the body. Trailer weight empty was 7,000 pounds, so I felt I needed all the strength I could get and only wanted to do it once! | 
In case you were wondering about the two-tone paint, it was a rare factory option. The Dodge had been outfitted with this blue-over-gray paint job. | 
I was happy to see the old mechanical version of the 12-valve in there, but wasn't happy to see the EGR (long tube across the top). It came on California trucks for '96-'98 only. |