Make sure your pcm is not factory tuned for 91 octane. if so, you will bring back the pinging regardless if you go back to 87. The 01's, some had the 91 tune and possible late 01's went back to 87 tune. and the 02's and 03's are mainly 87 tune.

The 00 R/T like the one I have is factory tuned for 91 octane to get the 5 extra hp. I am now running custom tune with 93 octane. Got rid of my beer keg and now using F1 airgap and will never look back. Airgap give very strong midrange torque and power.

I stuck with the factory recommend heat range, if you go colder, plugs will foul up easier. Colder plugs are good if you intend to run and stay in the high rpm range.. Not good for everyday normal driving.

 

Just curious Tommy, what did you do to tune it. I went with a Hypertech Power Programmer a lot of years ago. I set it for their '93 octane' setting, but it runs fine on mid-grade, saves me a buck.

 

I bought the SCT custom tuner and had hughes setup 2 programs (87 street/ 93 racing) on it with calibrations made for my Airgap intake and 52mm throttlebody.

 

So just wanted to share my findings, this weekend I was going to do a soak of the pistons using mopar combustion chamber cleaner, so I wanted to get before and after shots of the cylinder with my endscope camera. When I get to cylinder#7 driver side, I see coolant. On the passenger side and cylinder #8 I see what looks like coolant cleaned part of the edge of the piston.

Engine has 110k on it, never done a head gasket, its been hard to digest how bad this magnum 5.9 is turning out to be.