What’s up everyone, I just bought a sweet all original 2000 Dodge Ram 1500 Sport 4x4 Regular Cab RED with 48k miles. I already love this truck and I’ve only had it one day.

Some questions:

1). What is the biggest tire size I can run on this truck (its all stock with 16” wheels)? What is the meatiest off road bad looking tire? (I won’t be going off road; I just want that mud look)

2). What are some common problems with these? Anything I should look for right off the bat?

3). Where is the best place to buy accessories? Like chrome side steps, light bars, chrome grille guard, etc…

4). What did you guys pay for your exhaust mods? All I want to do is add a flowmaster & dual pipes out the back. What should this cost?


Thanks

 

Well First welcome to the forum.. and congrats on the truck.. same year and everything as mine..
But you have way less miles..lol.. mine is 166000 miles..
TO answer most of your questions.. it would be best to use the search.. most have been answered multible times...
I know I didnt help any..

 

I believe the biggest tires you can fit under a stock Sport edition are 285/75/16s. You can put bigger ones than that under, and they'll fit just fine, but when you turn hard they'll rub. I know thats been discussed before, use the search function at the top of the page to look up mores specific info.

Quote:

Two things come to mind right off the bat. Bad plenum gasket (symptoms include but not limited to: usually loss of power, oil consumption, worse than normal MPG) and transmission. The Chrysler transmissions for these trucks are notorious for being weak.



Anywhere you can get the good ones the cheapest. Online, local stores, wherever. And there's always eBay.



For a custom stainless steel cat-back dual exhaust setup with Magnaflow muffler and 2.25" pipes, I was quoted about $300 by my local shop. So somewhere around that probably. Stay away from aluminized steel.

 

2) Heads crack between the exhaust valve seats. Death flash (pertains to the aforementioned plenum problem). Tranny; If you do not maintain it, it will fail. Do fluid/filter changes at recomended intervals or you will have to buy a new one. TPS seems to fail uncommonly often causing tc failures and driveability problems in od. A lot of people whine about intake noise from the IAC inlet. There is no easy fix for this, and you may have to clean it often. An inline filter between the pcv and the intake manifold will help significantly. Other than that they are pretty solid trucks.

 

I believe my PCM is programmed for 265's right now, do i need a reprogram for the 285's?

 

Yea you can get it reprogramed at the dealer, or you can buy a power programer that allows you to change it, and it also helps out in the performance. You can check stylin concepts for the grills and running boards and those sorts of things they have tons of stuff. I paid 300 for my exhuast duals out to the side. And baby your transmission. Another thing to watch out for is your catalytic converter.

 

I run 285/75/16s so I know those fit...when I put my 315/75R16 I will need a 3 inch lift.

One suggestion I can give you is if you will be using this for road only I would not get mud tires...they look nice but you will get a high whine and you will tear through them faster. BFGoodwich all terrian are nice and I think that is what I am running now.

Welcome to the forum, Im still new but there is a lot of good people here ready to help out!

 

I was thinking that as well about the tires. I want goodyear MTR's because they look badass, but if its going to be on road only i don't know what to do. Those mud tires will probably wear very fast, create lots of noise, and kill my gas mileage, am i right?

 

It would be easier for me to list out the parts on these trucks that don't have problems.

Basically the dashs crack all the pieces fairly often as they are a cheap plastic.

The LSD's in the rear end go out fairly often if you have one of those. It seems to be the clips break off. I don't think i've talked to anyone with a factory LSD that hasn't had this happen so you might want to pull your rear diff cover and check it out.


The transmissions have quite a few common issues. I would make sure I kept up with the maintence on it but like I said there are some issues with it so doing the maintence on time isn't going to for sure make it last longer. If it goes out you can go with a company like APS that fixxes these issues. I've heard good things about Dr. Evil trnasmissions too but never dealt with them.

Then as mentioned earlier you have the issue of the heads cracking and causing a random missfire.

You also have the issue of the pleneum gasket going out. If it does go out don't replace it with the factory stuff as it will just do it again. APS and Hughes both make Pleneum kits that fix this so it doesn't happen again or you can go with a M1 intake that does away with teh pleneum design.

The bottoms of the doors are known for starting to rust.

Quite a few people have the headlight switch go out also. Luckily I haven't had that problem mine just had the **** break off so I had to replace it anyway but thats not a huge deal.

The other thing with the transmissions is the check ball in one of the lines seems to go bad and make the transmission overheat. It's pretty popular mod to remove that. Also if you don't already have a transmission cooler it's not a bad idea to add one.

If you run larger tires on this or aftermarket wheels that stick out more especially keep an eye on the hubs, ball joints, and other front end parts.

2 other things that also seem to go bad fairly often on these trucks are the trac bars and the stearing box's.

I loved this truck and still do but basically it seems like the only good things on this are the block and the front axle. I would say the engine but the heads seem to have issues.

 

Oh btw for the exhaust I paid $350 for a single in dual out Flowmaster 40 series with each pipe exiting behind the rear wheel on each side with stainless steel tips. The first time I called around all the shops seemed to be around that. The second time I called around most of them seemed to have gone up to $400 or so atleast. This guy still said $350 and he was known for being good around here so I went with him.