Started bagging my Dakota Quad cab over the winter and I've been chipping away at it as time permits. This is kinda a long read but thought it might interest someone. I used the Air Ride Technologies rear air bar and Cool ride front system. Bought the rest of the components from Suicidedoors. The install went without a hitch except for some parts from ART that weren't threaded. I contacted them and they made things right.

The start: Just removed the box to get going on the project. A Quad cab looks totally weird without a box. I did have the truck lowered on a 3/5 static drop before.



Front 4-link bracket installed



Moving along: Have the axle brackets bolted up to the 4-link bars and the crossbrace for the bags. This is were I ran into my first issue. The bolt in c-notch sections wouldn't clear the top axle brackets so I had to remove them and weld up some plate flush with the side of the frame on the outside. You can see the bolt-in C notch section sitting on top of the frame in the first pic.



Few pics of the rear bolted up Yeah, I know!! Total dirt bath on the frame. It's going to get cleaned before the box goes back on.





Pics of my valve set up: I chose to mount all my valves together in banks where the spare tire would normally be. Went with 1/2" valves for the fill and dumps. The dumps will have ball valves mounted on the outlets to throttle down the drop if need be. Thought this was an easy way of doing things compared to running a 16 valve set up or 3/8" dumps. Still have some final plumbing to do but the line from the tank will go into the press fit connector on the right. The dumps are on the left and you can see the yellow handle of one of the ball valves I installed on one of the dumps.




Front bags: The ART kit came with Firestone 2600's. I chose to swap them out for some Slam Specialties RE7's. They provide more lift and don't expand outwards as much as the Firestones.



Frame spring pocket cut: Just a shot of the trimming of the spring pocket I had to do for the front bags.



I've made more headway since these pics but haven't taken any pics yet. They'll be more. I promise. I have the front all bolted up and done now with the exception of welding on shock brackets and getting front shocks installed. Still have a few more 1/4" lines to run along the frame rails and into the cab for my gauges. This is what I'm going to run for a gauge set up. The gauges are just mounted in this pic but not plumbed in yet.




After that all that's left is to throw the box back on and wire and plumb in my comps and air tank. Went with a 5 gal tank and a Viair 380 and a Viair 480 compressor. Should be able to fill a 5 gal tank pretty quick and the sleeve bags on the rear don't require much volume to fill so a bigger tank might not be necessary.

I didn't go with a step notch in the rear because Dakotas (being the black sheep of the truckin' world) won't tuck. Need to get my rear axle shortened to do that. Sorry for the long post BTW. I'll update this thread later on down the road.