I try to be VERY careful but, nonetheless, I have a nice dent and crease down the passenger side bedside from a tree. Thankfully, you can only see it when the light hits it just right so, hopefully it will go unnoticed by my wife. Also, another tree saw fit to crack my driver's side taillight. These are the first two damages that irk me. (since they'll get my wife angry)
Little non-issue other damage thus far (order may not be right I can't remember exactly):
skidplates are starting to bend (and of course are all sorts of gouged up)
rocksliders of course are all gouged up, lol!
tip of the exhaust is mangled
rear bumper is tweaked with a nice size dent from a tree
^related to that the bottom of my bedside (where the bumper wraps around) has a little gouge in it from the bumper
of course a TON of pinstriping (I think it will all buff out though)
after three days of owning the truck I put a nice deep scratch in the tailgate right next to the handle when I was lifting some guardrail into the bed (the guardrail was for blocking illegal trail bypasses)
mangled one of the hubcaps on a rock, they are surprisingly expensive! (I now take them off to go wheeling!)
bent the heck outta one of the pieces that hangs down vertically from the front of the frame, behind the rear bumper (I believe it to be for the prevention of the truck going up over a car in a collision? I had thought it was for mounting a plow but someone said it was for safety.)
cracked the passenger side mirror housing on a tree
my fender flares are badly scratched
winch cable popped off the ferrule (guess I didn't have enough wraps on the drum) and so I am now the proud owner of a 6" shorter winch cable because I had to cut it where it started to unravel at the end, also the cable has some pretty bad kinks in it now from when I had to winch up an entire section of a trail in the mud. (I don't think any of the kinks are bad enough to warrant replacement but, they're still annoying!) I should have paid better attention to how it was laying on the drum, lesson learned. Had to pull the cable out like 7 times (IIRC) in a row for that one section, just couldn't get any traction! Every time I stopped the winch, I was stuck! But, on occasion, I got a little traction whilst the winch was going, shooting the truck forward putting slack in the cable which was then taken up by the winch, forming a new kink.
Non-wheeling related:
my fender flares are badly scratched got added to by my buddy's gate on his property
pinstriping got added to by some trees in a tight turn in a parking lot downtown (that was actually the first bad pinstriping)
Nice sized dent and a couple good sized scratches in the bedlined bed floor both from hauling a junk basketball hoop setup to the dump (for the destroyed surprisingly heavy fiberglass backboard) and the scrap metal place (for the surprisingly huge pipe setup the backboard was mounted to, it was around 120lb IIRC).
This is all in 7.5 months, like 8400 miles!
Like I say the only two that really irk me are the bedside and the taillight. I guess I better start getting used to it though!
If you never plan on selling it then don't worry about the cosmetics just function. You seem to be enjoying what your truck can do and you're learning how to get more out of it everytime you are on the trail. You have seen my truck up close and I'll tell you that I wouldn't trade it for any brand new truck on the market. All the dents and scratches cover up how much money is tied up in the truck. That's the way I see it. Right now people call it the trail whale but I bet the future name will be called the raisin! I'll be honest though, if you keep wheeling at uwharrie then your going to get more dents. And I'm sure your truck will get named too. I say just keep upgrading the broken parts and keep my cell handy when you get in a pinch.
(thanks to Pit Slave, I know where the drool icon is now! LOL!)
You're one of those guys who made 20 faces watching the video!
