I recently purchased a 96' Ram 1500 Ext. Cab Short Bed off my cousin, its got a 318 5.2L and an automatic tranny. The engine has 182k on and runs pretty quiet. I am looking to pick up a block with lower miles and do a rebuild on it. The truck is 2WD and my plans are to slam it on the ground after the engine/tranny swap. Any suggestions on a rebuild kit(crankshaft, pistons, rods and rings), cyl heads(preassembled prefferably), cams, intake manifold, throttle body, headers? And my question for the tranny is whats the difference in a torque converter that stalls at higher/lower rpm? Thanks your help is greatly appreciated

 

http://www.mopartsracing.com/parts/ram.html

this link has all the parts from the bottom end to the intake and the throttle body. As for what I would recommend it all goes by how you intend to do with it. Race? Street? Smooth Idle? Its all what you want.

I would personally not rebuild the motor until it broke. My bet is that your 5.2L will go to 250k miles. But its your truck man.

BTW welcome to the forum

 

Yeah, your engine has at least another 75k if it was treated right.