Okay, here's a new one for my 99 Dakota. The 2.5 liter 4 banger could use some help. 75K original miles on it and it could use some help for the hills. I find that I have to constantly down shift from 5th to 4th when I hit any kind of grade. I haven't the hard core cash to upgrade to a v6 and I do like the economy of the 4 it's just that it could use a little bit of help. It's bone stock bumper to bumper. Any suggestions? I'm getting the lower ball joints changed out so those won't be a further issue but would like to improve the performance a tad.

 

Good luck. The truck is so heavy that the little i4 is killing itself to move it around. I would save my money personally, but if you want to squeeze a little more performance out of it, try an intake/exhaust combo. Can you take a picture of the motor? I can only imagine how much space is available in that engine bay.

 

Yeah, I agree but that 4 banger is a game on little engine. The truck weighs 3550lbs and yes there's more room under the hood than what I have in the cab. But in October of 2005, I loaded about 500lbs of personnal stuff in the bed and put a 95 Chevy Berretta on a car dolly and hooked that to my Dakota and moved from Victorville, California to Claremont, New Hampshire. The truck did great except for the hills. Thank GOD it has the manual and since I'm a truck driver, I knew how to work the tranny. I'm thinking about a CATBAC system from Flowmaster, find a header for it and see if anyone makes a performance chip for the PCM.

 

the headers for a 4 cylender Jeep TJ work for headers since it is the same motor. I do not remimber which one my brother used but it had plenty of clearence.

 

i would go with a catback from magnaflow or some other free flowing muffler rather than flowmaster if your looking for performance. chambered mufflers aren't the best if your looking for pure performance

 

check and see if there is a turbo available for the 4.exhaust,cai and chip are only going to do so much for our truck with only a 4.good luck man.

 

my suggestion would be to get a K&N drop in filter for the stock air box, wrap the fuel rails with insulating tape, get a set of MSD 8.5 superconductor wires and look into a hotter coil. Then put synthetics in the motor, rear end & tranny. I'd strongly suggest doing more research on the exhaust before swapping it... you could kill any low end torque you have by opening up the exhaust too much.

what rpms are you turning when your hitting the hills?

 

I usually let it drop down to about 1.5k before taking out of 5th to 4th. The sweet spot for the truck mpg wise is 2.1k on the rpms. If the hill isn't too long, I let it hit 1k rpm and let it build back up. I'm considering swapping out to the V6 if the converting it won't be too costly. I'm looking into that.

 

well the suggestions I made will help... years back I was playing with a prelude and the same type of mods and I went from having to drop to 4th to maintain speed up my "test hill" to slightly accellerating in 5th (2~3mph at by the top of the grade).

 

a prelude is alot lighter than your dakota.if you are really looking into a v6 swap,look into the 3.7.that ia what is in my 2004 and it will run circles around the 3.9 that was in my 1999.