Is the tailgate the same across the 1994 - 2001, 1500 & 2500 Ram's? My tailgate is shot and a friend has a Ram (he's not sure what year, but says it has the same lights, grill, hood, etc... as mine), that has a good tailgate that he will give me (the truck is junk). He lives far from me so simply driving over to check it out is not a simple thing.

Thanks.

 

'94&'95 are a couple inches narrower.
I found this out the hard way when I went to buy a slide in camper.

 

I have a tailgate from a 98' on my early 95' dually. The hardware for the bottom was different, but It was a direct swap. All the aftermarket says the dually gates are different too, but I have no idea why.

 

Because of the cutout for the lights.

 

Thanks guys. He is supposed to try to find out what year the truck is. Hopefully it will fit.

 

I am pretty sure the bed shape did not change from 94-2002 25/3500.

The guy who would know for sure runs a camper/canopy shop.

 

Personally I thought the '94s were a couple of inches wider toward the back of the bed.

 

Same experience here. My 94 has the gate from a newer truck. I had to swap over the hardware on the bottom and play with the isolator a little on the hinge pin. A measuring tape and a cell phone could go a long way to satisfying you to make the drive.

 

What cutout?

My new gate came off a SRW and fits with no problems...

 

On the DRW there are the holes for the rear strip light to mount, thus making the rear gate different.

 

Think the difference may be just the lights themselves.
I added the light bar from a 3500 to my '95 2500.
All the holes and even the wiring and connectors for the lights were already there under the plastic trim piece. There was also an unused connector by the licence plate light for the tailgate light bar to plug in to.

What I thought was going to be a couple hour project turned into an easy 10 minutes.