I'm putting up my before and after pictures slowly as they come. I'll update my progress and include pictures here when things happen. If anyone has advice or recommendations e-mail me.

11/01 Lower gears. This was actually further down the time scale, but since the dealer was doing some work on my differential I had them install the 3.91 gears at no additional labor charge. The move from 3.55 to 3.91 will improve my acceleration and towing abilities. The cost is a little less gas milage on the highway. We'll see how much of a difference this makes.

10/01
New graphics applied. I was tired of getting lost in the crowd of plain looking Dakotas. So I decided to add some graphics. At first I was going for a superbee tail stripe, then I remebered what my dady always used to say: "Everything is better with flames". And from that came the design you see. My buddy Steven over at Smokindakota.com made these guys up for me, but the design was a Jay original. In the future I might do the same thing to the hood: Start a shelby stripe thing then end in flames towards the back of the hood.

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9/01
New throttle body and intake are in. The TB is a replacement billet aluminum unit from Flometrics. My particual unit is the serial #1 prototype 70mm version. The TB also comes in 69 and 72 and can be had for a good price at SpeedTweaks. The new intake tube and filter were a necessary replacement to my po'boy K&N set up. This Intense Performance intake is coustom made for the Flometrics TB, and can also be bought from SpeedTweaks. The combo of new intakes gives a real kick in the pants complemented by an additional howl from under the hood. Also if you look at the bottom of the photo, you might notice a missing battery.

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7/01
I removed the large 45lb battery from it's stock position, which is in the absolute worst spot when considering performance. The stock location is very high and out in front of the front wheels. I switched to a optima red top and placed it under the cab on a cross beam. It fits magically on this beam under the drivers side rear passenger seat. The 35lb optima had to be turned on it's side to fit in the tight spot, but this is a very cool mod. I'll get pictures up when I can, I find myself without a camera at the moment. If you look real close here you might see the new location. Under the truck directly below where the drivers door handle is you can see one of the tie downs I used to hold the battery in it's new location.

6/01
Here's my cool new number plating for autoX racing. I bought some magnetic material from a sign shop and just cut into big squares. Then I got a dakota buddy of mine at Smokindakota.com to fab up the orange vinyl stickers. I use #505 in the Los Angeles chapter (CSCC) and #287 in San Diego (SCCA-SD). The letters ESP distinguish my class. ESP tends to be RWD, 8cyc, suspension mods and exterior engine mods. Hence I tend to run against lowered Cameros and Mustangs with intake and exahust mods.

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6/01
I replaced all the vaccum hose with these orange ones. I also replace the windshield wiper fluid hoses, made wire covers out of the new hose for the cruise control, the AC electronics, the hood light, hood latch and various other things. Obviouly this doesn't make me go faster, but I think it looks cool. I got the hoses at a good deal from Hose Techniques.

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2/01 for tires, 4/01 for flares
When I replaced the balding tires that came with my 17" rims I went one size wider. The stock tire is 255/55/17", I replaced them with 275/50/17" Nitto 450's. These are an excelent tire with a tread wear of 300. The only problem is in conjunction with the off set change of the new wheels the wider tires stuck out of the wheel wells by about 3/4". So I went ahead and bought a set of oem fender flares that you usually see on 4x4's (and RT's). These give the trucks stance a very agressive look. Now I get complements all the time. Unintentionally I'm looking like an RT, which gets me more unwanted attention from punk street racers.

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12/00
I've got some 17" wheels from Ultra that I just put on the truck. The tires are the appropriate size so that the overall tire diameter hasn’t changed. So effectively I've increased the size of the aluminum and reduced the height of the tire. This should stiffen up the side walls for better steering control and give the Dak a sleeker look.

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12/00
I decided to go with the Flowmaster 70 series muffler instead of the Gibson I bought earlier. The Flowmaster is on the truck now and performs great with a mellow sound. I used the gibson 3" tail pipe and tip that came with the Gibson kit, so it's kind of a "frankenpipe" exaust.

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11/00
My Hotchkis suspension is now installed. This lowers it 2in in the front and 3 in the rear. Not much difference it ride height, which is good for me, but phenomenally better handling in the twisties. The kit includes front coil springs, rear leaf springs, beefy front and rear sway bars and bilstien shocks all around. Sorry the pictures aren't consistant, but you can get an idea of before and after.

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11/00
Recently I went and change the Oil for the first time. I replaced the stock oil, what ever it was, with fine synthetic Mobil 1. With the Jet Computer chip installed your required to use a 180deg therm for the cooling system, so I changed that too. When changing the thermostat is this engine you have to drain all the coolent, so I decided to go ahead and change it too.

11/00
I bought and installed a Jet stage II computer chip. the Idea behind this thing is to send the computer false codes to get it to perform the way I want it to. How is this a good thing you ask. Well for towing, running bad gas and not having free-er air systems its not a good thing, but for going fast it is. I'll throw in a picture of it soon. For the "before" picture, just imagine it not there.

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11/00
I've gone and built my own air intake, it was fairly easy. About $15 worth of ABS PVC 3" piping, some ABS cement and a K&N Filter for a cost total of about $70. The "Homebrew" intake gave me a noticable improvement in HP and gas mileage. I built this with the help of the guys on the Dakota Mailing List. A dakota buddy of mine built one of these poor boy intake per my directions. It looks much better than the one I made and he put together a fine "how to". If your interested in making your own check his link.

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11/00

I got an Aiwa indash MP3 player from Crutchfield. I love this thing. What makes it unique is that it reads MP3's from a CD-R instead of some soon to be obsolete disk. A CD-R looks and acts like a normal music CD. You can write 650 megabytes worth of info on them. What all this means is that in MP3 format you can fit around 150 to 200 songs on one CD. Kenwood is the only other brand I know of, but it's twice as much and the face doesn't detach. Sorry no before picture. The fancy colors on the MP3 player make the rest of my dash look a little dull.

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11/00
I've been waiting for another part to install the billet grill. It's here now so it'll only take me a couple of days to put it in and get a picture.

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10/00
Secondly I bought some cheap clear clear corner lights. I think these clear ones look much better that the orange ones. To stay semi-legal I had to change to orange bulbs, which you can see through the lens.

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9/00
First thing I did was remove the door stickers from both sides.I haven't had a chance to develope the after shot of this one yet.

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