Maverick Kerns' 1992 Dodge D350: The Custom Bagged Build

Maverick Kerns’ 1992 Dodge D350: The Custom Bagged Build

Mike Self December 22, 2023 Diesel World

Maverick Kerns Does What He Does

There are certain sayings that seem to perfectly describe certain scenarios. For instance, upon first laying eyes on Maverick Kerns’ laid-out ‘92 Dodge D350, one might exclaim, “You don’t see that every day,” and you’d be totally right. Unless, of course, you’re Maverick. But then, you might also say, “Holy smokes!” Again, you’d be right – it’s an old work truck, so it’s bound to have some holes here and there, and it’s running a modded 12-valve Cummins, so there’s going to be smoke.

Well, no matter what you blurt out while checking out his Dodge, it seems obvious that Maverick is used to hearing it all, including the occasional, “What did you do to that truck?” with both the negative and positive connotations that come along with that question. For the naysayers, Maverick’s answers will likely never satisfy, but for those who are genuinely curious, he’s always happy to spend a few minutes filling folks in.

“I’d always been a Dodge guy and hadn’t seen any first gens built, so it only made sense in my mind,” explains Maverick. A lifelong Dodge fan as well, Maverick’s dad was actually the one who bought the truck, about four years ago out of Tennessee. Maverick had offered to help by freshening up the suspension, and before he knew it, he had “accidentally” gone a few steps farther and fabbed up a completely new air ride setup, including custom tubular arms and a 4-link. And that’s just the simple rundown. A little more detail reveals that the frame was also step-notched, a Watts link was incorporated into the rear suspension, and he even fabricated custom steering linkage for extra clearance before connecting them to ‘96 Ram 3500 spindles.

All these upgrades took tons of work to be sure, but it’s not like you can just buy a kit for these trucks like you can for Chevys. While keeping the motivation to complete the build was never an issue, finding parts for the Dodge would prove to be a challenge. Nearly everything on the truck had to be custom fabbed, since there are so few plug-n-play solutions out there for rigs like this. Even if you could find those, though, that’s just not Maverick’s style – he enjoys the trial-and-error process and would rather build it himself to get things exactly like he wants them. “It’s not a weekend job” to finish a build like this, reports Maverick, but boy was it worth it.

Since the truck was now a bit wilder than his dad really wanted, Maverick offered to buy the truck off him and finish it for himself. Thankfully, he said yes. Score! Nicknaming the D350 “Johnny Ringo,” Maverick continued on, improving the truck in many key areas. After all, it was already torn apart, so it’d be easiest to just go for the glory now rather than tear the truck down again in the future.

To that end, the ‘96 Cummins received a P7100 injector pump, which pushes a major 425cc of fuel. The engine was also treated to 5×0.018 injectors, as well as a set of Industrial Injection S362 and S475 compound turbos to squeeze as much power out of the 12-valve as could reasonably be extracted without the risk of destroying anything. And, of course, Maverick swapped in a ‘96 NV4500 5-speed manual transmission with a South Bend twin-disc clutch – no slushbox for this torquey beast.

Dropped this low, the Dodge lays frame when fully aired out. An Airlift 3P kit pairs with dual Viair compressors and two 5-gallon air tanks to provide that head-turning bagged look.

Even though his dad wasn’t interested in driving a bagged D350 every day, Maverick has no problem doing so, and reports that it’s been nothing but reliable since completion. You might ask – completion? That’s right. “She’s perfect,” he states. Maverick considers his Dodge finished and doesn’t plan on changing anything, aside from keeping it running. Oh, and swapping out the rear tires every once in a while from the huge burnouts he lays down from time to time.