I got at it this morning and put on the running boards and the rear bumper. I want to raise up the front bumper about 4" because its simply too low to be of any use. One time last year, while I was dri9ving the truck, I had parked in a lot rows of cars two deep. When I cam out of the store, there was a Chevy pickup backed into the space in front of me, really close to the front end of my truck. When I looked, the ball on his trailer hitch was only about 2" from the nose piece on my truck, my front bumper was under his hitch. That was the point I decided I needed to raise up the bumper.

My entire truck sits about 10" - 12" lower than this truck would have originally sat. The nose piece (its one panel that attaches to the front edge of the front fenders and covers the entire nose of the truck ahead of, and below the hood. That nose piece has cut outs from the bottom of the piece up 6" and 4" wide on each side for the bumper brackets to protrude through. The original Dakota 4x4 frame was cut off just in front of the radiator support mounting holes, and that cut off frame is about an inch behind the nose piece. The Dakota's frame horns would have been just under the headlights, would have been centered between the turn lights and the grille openings, and in my opinion would have been much too high for this truck. As such, I added simple angle iron brackets to the Dakota front crossmember out through the original nose bumper mount cutouts and made brackets to support the chrome bumper. simple and easy, but pretty low. The bottom of the bumper has made contact with a few road dips here in town. I've made the decision to simply modify the existing bumper brackets and raise up the bumper after the brackets come through the original cutouts. I spent most of the afternoon scratching my head trying to figure out exactly I was going to do that. I think I have a plan, I'll know tomorrow... At this point everything is dune except the front bumper, and detailed cleanup, inside and out.
So pictures or it didn't happen, right?
Pic 1-4.
Pic 4 Shows the front nose piece. To put things into perspective, the aluminum radiator is sitting on the Dakota radiator support, which is between the Dakota front frame rails. The Dakota frame kicks outward at that point! As it is, the Dakota frame ends just in front of the sheet metal. When I first put the truck together, the bumper bolted to the frame extensions located in the cutouts, the top of the bumper was about an inch above the frame extensions. The new bumper location will be directly in front of the larger openings in the grille, below the radiator. I believe most of the frame extensions will be covered by the bottom of the bumper, but if not, I might beef up the extensions and add pull hooks on the frame extensions under the bumper. When I'm all said and done, the front bumper will still be a bit low, I believe the top edge will be in the 15" of the ground range.