I have a 2000 Dakota Club Cab SLT+ luxo cruiser and towing beast.
I needed a daily driver that I could tow a full 6500+ lbs with and haul
2000 lbs in the bed. I was looking for a Ram 1500 then my wife discovered
a Dakota on the lot equipted right. I didn't realize you could get a Dak
to tow 6700lbs and have a 2000lb payload capacity.
Mine has the 4.7L with Multispeed Auto. 3.92 with sure grip (antispin) and
the handling package with rear sway bar. It also has a factory CLASS IV
hitch and HD service group. Its a rough and tumble work truck (although I
had to throw in trip computer, pwer everything, cruise, pwr seats, and cd
with equalizer).
I feel the handling is every bit on par with my old 5.0 mustang. The stock
tires suck, but so do most stock tires, especially on trucks. The stock
shocks are a joke.
Gary Pinkley of Hotchkis fame found out about my interest in racing and
background and convinced me to come out for the local Cal Club Autocross
last April. My truck was TOTALLY stock (I might have had the catback on
then that's it). I was slow, but not embarrassingly so. The annoucer kept
making note of the fact that I was making it clean through a very tight one
mile course while sports car after sports car were spining out and catching
cones.
As I got more seat time I became more aggressive in the truck and it became
fun to catch glimpses of scared corner workers backing up!!! Sometimes
running for cover!!! It didn't take long till I was noting all the sports
cars I was beating. A lot of it was is course dependent. Only so fast you
can go in a Dakota on a very tight course, but on a few open and fast
courses I had times that were pretty impressive. I beat a majority of the
non prepped/non regular street guys that come in to check things out.
Last race at Hollywood park there was a brand new 330ci BMW with a guy
driving really hard. I crushed him. I regularly beat the guys running the
stock pony car class except for the two cars that run at a national level
(I can't touch them obviously). I am not particularly competitive in the
sport truck class since it allows extensive mods. I just can't compete
with a fully prepped truck on race tires with an experienced driver, but
sometimes I surprise. At Buttonwillow Raceway we ran a track event. Very
high speed compared with typical Solo2. I was close but finished second on
Saturday. We did fun runs in the afternoon and I got fast time of day for
trucks. Didn't count for a trophy but it did in the pride column! Next
day it rained. I had a 5 second lead over the lead guy in class who had
one attempt left. Because of a wild series of events and sandbagging he
was told to park it and the run group ended. He protested and was allowed
to make one more run. Two hours later.... IN THE DRY. He beat me by less
than three seconds when on average the dry groups ran 10 seconds faster.
Oh well, my chance to win class fell by the wayside.
I ran most of this year stock. All the stories about beating sports cars
were as a totally stock vehicle. The last four races I have added tires
and shocks. At the same time I also added a Quick D intake, a 180
thermostat, and a Jet Chip II.
The tires are totally wild 305-50-15 BFG Euro T/A's. They are a
relatively hard compound. But they are over 12 inches wide. They do have
a very stiff sidewall and they do add over 2 inches to my track width. The
change really helped with the sidewall rollover I was experiencing with the
255-65-15 Badyears.
The shocks are ProComp ES9000. I was afraid of topping out the Bilstein's
with a stock height HD suspension. My truck sits pretty high. The
ProComps came highly recommended and I'm thrilled with them (cheap too!!!).
So, yes a stock Dakota can do amazing things as long as you're willing to
throw it around a little. As a drag racer, I'm comfortable with a little
bit of lack of control. Racing a stock height Dakota around the course
takes a bit of faith. Use the force, I say.... They want to push so
badly that sometimes it helps to push'em hard and get'em loose with a
little overzealous throttle, trailing throttle, and trail braking. Left
foot braking is critical to getting the most out of it. Unfortunately, I
have a split bench and its just too tough to left foot brake and stay in
the seat. If I were to race this any longer I'd figure out a way to put a
harness in, but I'll start racing a car in March. So, I'm not changing the
truck.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 11:58:32 EDT