Yes, on my 49, I moved the wheel opening in the fenders towards the front about an inch and a half. That was required without moving the cab back. My motor sits right against the 49 cabs (Dakota) firewall. Then I used the bottom 1/2 of the Dakota radiator support to build my radiator support off of (I had to modify the top of the radiator support to clear the corners of the hood). My motor & trans, front axle brackets (which are also the motor mount brackets), and the radiator support are all on Dakota factory mounting brackets. I even had to trim the sheet metal on the top of the grille/nose piece to clear the radiator.
The Dakota radiator support on the 4x4 truck mounts to the frame just before the frame kicks outward for the front bumper mounting brackets. My Dakota frame is cut off about a 1/2" in front of the radiator support mounting holes in the frame, and I had to remove everything inside the nose piece to clear the end of the frame. There is no space to add an AC condenser in front of my radiator. If I fit a condenser, it would have to mount on the front sheet metal, and there isn't enough space to run AC hoses. Yes, it is that close. With everything in the location it needed to be in, the wheel opening in the fenders were in the wrong place, I had to move them forward to look right. That 1 1/2" was about as far forward as I could move my wheel openings in the fenders. Had I moved the cab back, the wheel openings in the fenders would have still been off, or I would have had to modify the nose piece to accept the farther forward wheel opening.
Essentially, the distance from the front of the radiator to the firewall on a Dakota is longer then the space between the firewall and the front nose piece on at least my 49.
Pictures:
1) This is a pic of the front end of a 92 Dakota 4x4 rolling frame. The circle in the extreme right side on the top of the frame is where the original Dakota radiator support bolted onto the frame. The 2 wheel drive frame is pretty much completely different, but what remains the same is the location of those mounting holes with a factory motor mounting system. Notice how close to that front mounting point this frame is cut off, That point on the frame is about a 1/4" away from the front sheet metal mounting pieces inside of the nose piece.
Pic 2) This was the point I had to change out the OEM Dakota radiator 9it was leaking between the plastic tank and the aluminum core). You are looking straight down at the upper surface of the Dakota radiator support bolted to the frame, with the 49s sheet metal bolted onto that radiator support. At this point the truck had around 3,000 miles, so this was a functioning setup. I should note here that everything you see (except the primmer sheet metal, is Dakota V8 4x4 factory stuff mounted on factory mounts. The round hole on the right side of the two round holes, and the oblong hole on the right side are the two holes where the radiator pins sat down into the rubber bushing to hold the bottom of the radiator in place. The radiator sat directly above that piece with the holes in it. There was about 3/4" of clearance between the fan clutch and the radiator core.
The red primmer pieces you see at the very bottom are the flanges that add support to the sheet metal openings on the nose piece. I had to trim those pieces to clear the radiator core on the outer edges.
Pic 3) The modified front fender before body work. Notice how close to the nose piece the wheel opening was moved to. That distance was about 3/4", but if I had really needed to, I might have gotten maybe another inch before I would have had to modify the nose. There is a flange on that front edge that bolts to a matching flange on the nose piece. Altering that matching dual flange mounting would have been a royal pita.
like I stated, there are differences between the 48-53 and the 54-56 sheet metal, and there is a difference between the 4x4 frame and a 2x4 frame. The 54 was nearly 20 years ago, and the last 2x4 Dakota was 12 years ago, and they were not both hear at the same time.
Someone did reference that the 97-2003 Dakota sheet metal was bolted to the same 88-96 chassis. According to him, the 2004 was an all new frame. I have no idea if that is fact or not. Honestly, I have not been under enough 97+ Dakotas to know.
