There are some real advantages to holding on to your truck for a long time. Specifically, once the truck is paid off, not having a monthly payment is great. Unfortunately, as the new body styles continue to roll out from the OEM’s, our trucks can quickly begin to look dated. For Ford and GM, the same basic body style has been around for a while. So, updating the fenders, bumper, grills, and lights can be pretty easy. Doing this conversion can take your 14 or 15 year old truck and make it look almost current. Unfortunately, when Dodge made a body style change, it wasn’t a simple fascia change. Dodge retooled the entire vehicle between the different generations.
So does that mean you are out of luck? Nope. Recently we were talking to Danny Brown who owns an ‘01 Dodge Ram 2500. He recently updated his front end with a 4th generation front bumper and then updated his grille to an ’02.
“The conversion really isn’t bad at all. The bumper lines up perfect with the fender lines. I ordered the bumper and then looked around and OverkillFab.com actually offers conversion brackets for the job. A friend of mine has a CNC machine though. So we just took the stock bumper off, measured the holes on the frame, did some measuring on the holes in the bumper and he punched in some stuff on the computer and we watched it work. We bolted the pieces in place and held everything where we wanted it and tack welded it together. Then, laid it down in the floor and welded up all the brackets. It’s actually a very easy, very clean looking conversion,” said Brown.
As Brown mentioned, Overkill Fabrications does offer the brackets, made to order. So, don’t worry if you don’t have a friend with a CNC machine. Overkill Fabrications uses 3/16” plate steel and all of the brackets are laser cut. So, they are guaranteed to fit and be sturdy. One of the cool things about this conversion is that there are no holes or modifications needed. This is a direct bolt in kit once the brackets are either fabricated or purchased.
For Brown, he noticed that there was a big gap between the grill in his ’01 and his new 2013 bumper. So after doing some measuring, he swapped over to an ’02 grill that ends up being about 1 ¼” thicker than his original grille. “It filled the gap up perfect! I have had so many compliments on this truck now. Nobody else around here has seen it done,” mentioned Brown.
You might also like
What’s New For The 2026 Ram Heavy Duty? Warlock, Black Express, And?
Ram doubles down on last year's 2026 Ram Heavy Duty updates, highlighted by the 6.7-liter Cummins High-Output paired to an 8-speed automatic.
