1992 Dodge Dakota sport review from North America

Radiator was replaced shortly before I bought it at 75000 miles.

Head gasket twice, 85000 and 100000.

Odd noise in transmission when making left turns under acceleration.

Valve going bad causing extreme power loss on highway.

Problems with front brakes and rotors almost constantly.

Rear differential replaced, gears stripped.

I bought this car from a friend which was my first mistake, never ever do that. There was a clunking noise when I bought it, he said the dealer said it was nothing, turned out to be a bad rear differential. Shortly after that the car began overheating, turned out to be a bad head gasket. Shortly after that a strange noise developed in the transmission and I still havent found the cause of that. I have had to replace rotors a few times in the 3 years I have owned it. Just in the past month it has began overheating again and so far a radiator flush, and thermostat havn't worked so I'm afraid its the head gasket again.

So over all I have had a ton of problems with it. Luckily I am able to do a lot of the work myself, but the amount of money I have put into the thing is ridiculous. I understand that it is an old truck, but I take care of it and I still get these reoccurring problems. It has been my experience that Dodge trucks just aren't made with the most reliable technology, I have seen about 6 or 7 of them in my group of friends and average repair costs of about $5000 each. Sure they are great looking and require little work when new, but after they approach 80/90k it seems like everything starts to fail at the same time.