Ram truck SLT to SRT in 329 easy steps!

[ckessel]

Knowing how well the oe stuff fit on many of the new vehicles, you're probably light years better.

 

[Kern Dog]

Thanks Carl.
The red quad cab had decent fitting panels except the door.
Here we go.

I had to run a steel framing square down in between the cladding and the door to pry the panel off. The top flange was the only one that wasn’t holding well.

You can see the top flange tape sticking to the door almost entirely.

The other three bands of tape mostly stuck to the cladding piece. I just peeled it all off. The panel fit nice except the gap at the top.

 

[Kern Dog]

The top flange may not have allowed the tape to stick because of the surface.

I used a wire wheel on a drill to clear off the old tape.

It left some grooves.

I’m going to try to smooth them down to get the flange smoother. It is just bonehead logic but I think the rough surface didn’t allow the tape to stick as well.

 

[Kern Dog]

Like it is with a lot of other things, I’m no professional at this. I’m just figuring it out as I go.

To get a better “bite” with the tape, I cleaned the flanges with solvent after smoothing out those ridges. When applying the tape, I pressed it into place with the roller and my thumbs.

I redid 3 of the 4 strips. The bottom one is somewhat redundant since I added screws at the bottom.

Backing tape was pulled off…

It sits really tight. Im
Happy with that.

This is much better than before.

That is good enough for me.

 

[Kern Dog]

Now for the hole on the left side…

When I was trying to draw in the front edge corner, the door has a double steel panel spaced apart so judging the right length of screw was difficult. One was long enough for the cutter portion to get to the cladding flange but that cutting end has no holding power.

I took a longer self tapper screw and ground the end off. I clearly needed to cut 1/4” or more off than I did since the screw cut all the way through and 3/16” beyond.

Back to the body and paint supply shop.

Two part epoxy. Sandable and forgiving. I could have used body filler but I didn’t want to risk a crack if that screw moved later.

It set up quick.

This will get leveled out, primed and then sprayed with color and clear.

 

[ckessel]

I was going to suggest wiping the tape area of the cladding with acetone etc but you already took care of that. Plastics need some extra help to make things stick/bond sometimes. There may have still been some mold release compound still embedded in it. When you're painting raw plastic stuff, cladding/bumper fascias/moldings/handles etc, just roughing them up is not enough. Paint and other things won't bond. Like PVC needing the purple primer before the glue. When I worked at one dealer in 99/00, the Durango's were having issues with the flares coming off. Tape not sticking. They didn't pay to clean and retake. Replace the flares only. I ended up getting 4 Deep Amethyst[ plum crazy purple] flares for my wife's Durango for free once the old ones cleared warranty. Ordered the two rear door pieces, cleaned and retaped the flares, bingo. Flares on her ride.

 

[eldubb440]

I was going to suggest wiping the tape area of the cladding with acetone etc but you already took care of that. Plastics need some extra help to make things stick/bond sometimes. There may have still been some mold release compound still embedded in it. When you're painting raw plastic stuff, cladding/bumper fascias/moldings/handles etc, just roughing them up is not enough. Paint and other things won't bond. Like PVC needing the purple primer before the glue. When I worked at one dealer in 99/00, the Durango's were having issues with the flares coming off. Tape not sticking. They didn't pay to clean and retake. Replace the flares only. I ended up getting 4 Deep Amethyst[ plum crazy purple] flares for my wife's Durango for free once the old ones cleared warranty. Ordered the two rear door pieces, cleaned and retaped the flares, bingo. Flares on her ride.

this stuff has a place on the bench.......comes in aerosol, too

 

[ckessel]

That's the stuff. Have you ever seen paint peeling off of bumpers covers in large portions? Thats what happens when you just scuff and paint. It has to be scuffed, cleaned with a solvent to get mold release out, then the adhesion promotor goes on, then paint. Sometimes sealer before the paint if the pigment in the paint is thin and doesn't cover well.

 

[Kern Dog]

I have some adhesion promoter from U-Pol. I used it when I primed and painted the new front bumper cover.
I do thank Carl for reminding me of the need for it. I haven't had the occasion to paint any of these plastic body panels before so I wasn't aware of their special needs.

 

[Kern Dog]

Busy day.
It is annoying when a simple mistake takes so long to correct. The screw too long derailed forward progress a bit. I sanded down the epoxy that I spread but I went a bit too far and had to go back over it. I decided to use RAGE body filler for the finish work since it sands to an invisible edge.

A bit of sanding with a tiny block with 400 grit sandpaper wrapped around it., then 800 grit to make sure the edges faded. I then roughed it up slightly with a Scotch Brite.

Then a bit of this stuff:

Then this:

After drying, I block sanded it with 400 grit to smooth it out and eliminate the speckles. I had a small ding near the taillight. I almost left it alone but figured that it would bug me later to see it when I could have fixed it during this whole process.

It wasn't that noticeable to others but I knew it was there.

 

[Kern Dog]

This piece of cladding didn't sit tight at the front/left edge:

I pulled it off and retaped it. It fits nice now. The cladding is ready to be scuffed, get 3 more coats of paint then the clear.
I have 2 grilles to paint. I bought 2 because I want to see what style that I like the most. The leading contender is this:

ALL Inferno Red. It isn't stock but then again, this is all a deviation from stock anyway.
The other plan is this grille:

With the slats from my original grille...

To look like the stock SRT-10 grille.

Both look cool to me but I'm leaning toward the all red style.
I need to paint the hood scoop too. That dude sure had a lot of chipped paint. Check out the pink-ish colored spot putty I had to use to fill.

 

[Kern Dog]

Today was a baby step back into painting. It has been a few years since I painted a whole car. Some habits you develop by feel where you just find your own way, a way that works for you. I’ve said for years that one difference between a newbie and a professional is that the pro knows how to make corrections along the way to keep moving forward. The newbie often makes mistakes and cannot overcome them while a pro knows ways to adjust to a changing condition. I had some mistakes today but all in all, it worked out pretty good.
I have 3 1/2 quarts of paint. It mixes 1 to 1 with reducer so that 3 1/2 quarts equates to 7 quarts of sprayable color. Sometimes when you have a spotted panel like this:

You have to expect to lay down several coats to make those spots hide and get an equal color across the whole panel. I don’t know if it is common to just spray the spotted areas several times then go over the whole panel with 2 or 3 coats. What really matters is that once it is done, the color is even and no primer spots can be seen.
For clear, I had 2 quarts. Those mix 4 to 1 to 1/2.
Clear.
Catalyst.
Reducer.
This means each quart when mixed is 32 ounces + 8 ounces + 4 ounces for a total of 44 ounces, about 1 1/3 quarts sprayable. I needed more clear.

A quickie body and fender shop will have a clean, dust free and bug free spray booth and experienced workers that can lay down paint with minimal flaws.
That isn’t me. I’m out in a semi rural area with some dust, some bugs and add to that sweat and eyelashes. Stuff falls into the freshly sprayed panels sometimes.
Body shops may spray and then send the car down the road with no sanding and buffing. Most production cars and trucks have some degree of orange peel anyway. My truck had some repairs to the body years ago and those areas had orange peel.
The hood scoop came out nice enough to install as is.

The grille too.

The tail gate looks okay in pictures but has some flaws to correct.

 

[Kern Dog]

The tailgate color went on fine. It looks even with no Tiger stripes.
That is a condition that sometimes happens with the metallic particles where they don’t all blend together. The finish looks uneven in color. There are many causes for that, one is when the painter doesn’t have adequate overlap when spraying. I’ve been used to a 50% overlap with the gun about 8-10 inches from the surface when painting. I’m a bonehead at a lot of things so maybe my technique could use some adjustments. It did come out pretty even in color though.

That is with 3 coats of clear.
After the first coat, I got a few drops of water on the wet clearcoat surface. I dabbed a paper towel corner at the drops and got them out. The second coat went on fine but the 3rd got a few gnats in it. They can be brushed off once the clear dries. I can sand and lay down another coat or two and later sand out any flaws. You can see the reflection of trees in the finish.

I had decent results today. I have had days that were a lot worse.
The grilles: One is almost perfect and the other is not. Not at all.

The clear coat really brought out the sparkle in the paint. All this cladding that I've been looking at just looks so dull so this impressed me. I've decided to use this one. The second grill looks okay from here, but....

After the second coat of paint, some flying bug landed on the top bar and fluttered around until it flew off. That left a valley in the paint so I had to get some spot putty to fill it in.

The finish looks a bit rough but it won't matter. It is just a tack coat for cover.
I wasn’t going to clear coat it but I had some left in the gun and I didn’t know how soon I’d get back to finishing this grille. This paint has to be covered within 24 hours or it has to be scuffed and repainted before clear can be sprayed on. I figured just to lock the color in for now. This one can be scuffed and hit with another 2 coats of clear after the paint repair at the top is addressed.
This grille will get stowed away though. That all red grill just looks too good to me so I've decided to just use it. If I wanted to use the chrome slats, I could use them in this grille shell anyway.
There have only been a few times that I have done a partial repaint. One time about 13 years ago I sprayed a silver fender for a neighbor. In a stroke of the best luck one could ask for, the paint color and metallic particles were a perfect match for the truck. Once installed, the truck looked untouched.
I don't know what to expect here though. The truck is garage kept and has never seen 120 degree heat. While this truck is over 17 years old, it is not 100% original factory paint. I had the dealer repaint the LH fender and bedside due to scratches it had from sitting on the dealer lot. In 2016, I was hit on the right side requiring body and paint work to the fender and door. Looking real close, I can tell what is factory and what isn't but it isn't obvious. I have worried a bit that this new paint may not match the existing color but today it occurred to me.....

....With this project, I am painting all the SRT-10 cladding, both bumpers, the grille, hood scoop and the entire bed. The only part left untouched will be the cab, doors, fenders and hood. IF the new paint doesn't match, I could just go ahead and paint the rest of the truck. It is only money, right?

 

[Phantomx]

While I was reading this, I was saying to myself “why aren’t you just painting the whole damn thing??” If you don’t, it’s gonna look like you put a new bed and body kit on an old work truck, or copart wreck. I kid, but deep down you know. The truck is looking good though.
Travis..

P.s. if you had a third grill option for black slats, I woulda voted for that.

 

[Kern Dog]

The prep work is where all the time goes. By the time you’re ready to paint, the job could be as much as 75% done.

I’ve gone about this project like an A.D.D. Tweeker … changing my plan all the time. One of my first ideas was to paint all the new parts off the truck and then just install them afterward. Along the way I figured that with some of the drilling and fitment issues I was bound to have, it might be better to test fit first. That morphed into where I am now, a mix of all the ideas that I’ve had. I “pre-painted” all the new parts, fitted them then scuffed them for final paint. Hey… I’m not working on someone else’s car here so my time is mine to waste!

I bought new headlight assemblies so I pulled the old ones. The grill will be swapped so I removed the chrome one. This allows full access to the bumper cover so two birds-one stone there. All the cladding got sanded and scuffed. The truck got masked from the cab-forward. As I focused on the bed, I found a few more scuffs to address. Fingertips are a great tool for finding flaws. Any ridge or scrape you can feel will be visible once the paintwork is done. Right here outside of the taillight, I felt a ridge.

It was a crack in the body filler. I took a die grinder to take the filler down to below the crack. You can’t just fill a crack and think that you’re done. A crack will travel. You have to remove the filler to below the crack and start over.

I widened the area so the filler would have a gentler angle.

Rough pass, waiting for it to harden so I can shape it.

 

[Kern Dog]

Finally.

The cladding only needs 2-3 more coats of paint since they already had 2-3 coats on them. Sand through areas needed more.

The bed needs about 5 coats to cover the repaired areas.

This is fun but nerve wracking. I enjoy the process but stress about making mistakes.

I got 4 coats of clear on and figured that since it laid down pretty nice, I was done. The color really pops once the clear goes on.

 

[Kern Dog]

I had a little time left to demask and start putting it back together.
Here is a little comparison to the way it used to look:

The headlights are new. The grille and slats are body color and the front bumper is different. I'll get the tailgate, taillights and rear bumper all sorted tomorrow.

 

[eldubb440]

looks good, almost like you know what you are doing

I bought paint for my Dakota a month ago

 

[Kern Dog]

This paint spread out great. I’m happy with that. The clear laid down really nice on the tailgate but I have a bit more orange peel on the body than I like. There was some after I finished spraying but I think as it has dried, it increased a bit.

It may not be visible on a small screen.

The tailgate was painted and cleared while laying flat. I was able to “flood” the clear on and it laid nice. The side panels are at greater risk of sags and runs if you move too slow, have the gun too close or have the clear reduced too much.

I do like the look.

The new paint is a shade lighter at least. I may see if it bothers me enough to scuff and spray the rest of the truck. I have enough paint since all I’d need to do is scuff and lay down a couple coats. I would need more clear though.