I have a 5.9L durango and I'm wanting to put some mean horsepower in it. I'm trying to avoid a super/turbo charger at the moment. I've got a k&n cai and a magnflow performance exhaust on the way. What else can i do to get some easy horsepower? I don't have a budget so give me any ideas. thanks

 

You can get a junk yard motor and have the cylinders bored out and put a high performance cam shaft. And enlarge the exhaust ports and install headers.

 

Why not go with some kind of F/I? That's really the only way to get some "mean" horsepower. If you do what master tech mentioned you could go ahead and have plenty of time to go the F/I route. If you wanna keep it N/A there is also doing above mentioned and getting a cowl or ram air hood, the functional kind, and adding a open element round filter.

 

it's getting boosted dont worry lol just not right now. I don't have 6 grand for a supercharger or a turbo right now but as soon as the funds come in i'm doing it

 

You could replace the stock thermostat with a 180 deg one. Removing the mechanical fan and replacing it with an electric one will free up some horses that you've already got too. A higher flow intake manifold such as the m1 would also give some extra power, as would a bored out throttle body.

 

It will cost quite alot to get any good meaningful horsepower boost. Look at my sig.

$1000 for F1 airgap intake with install
$300 for SCT custom PCM Tuner
$250 for fastman 52mm Throttle body
$7 for custom ram air intake
$0 removed mechanical radiator fan. Using oem electric fan.

These mods gave my R/T some good grunt midrange power, but still not enough to complete with some of the new sports sedans and such with what I currently have. I like to do the exhaust as my next choice, but I am going top to bottom route.

Top to bottom means, I am working from top of engine to bottom engine then out the engine.

I will get my heads and cam replaced as my next upgrade and hope to have enough left over to upgrade exhaust providing I still have my truck by that time. I may decide to simply just have my engine completely rebuilt if I have to go to the heads/cam route, get it stroked to a 407 and put in some high compression pistons, etc...

At one time, I was talking to Dan the Fastman about a engine upgrade, and he had one that he would sell me for $8500 with engine swap. Did not have budget then, but I may still ponder on doing that later vs getting another car. Fastman's $8500 5.9 is stroked out to 6.7 with dyno'ed HP in the over 500hp range normally aspirated.

My truck is now a part time driver with fuel rising up in DFW. I drive my wife's jetta to save fuel when running long distance errands.