First off, I recently replaced my water pump, thermostat and gasket, and I'm 100% sure that its not the problem, I keep smelling coolant with no visible leaks at all. Second my exhaust just fell off, it had a cherry bomb muffler that was installed before I received the truck. I loved the sound it made but I would like it to be louder with the same tone, and having to fix the broken exhaust I figured I would try to figure out what to do to get that loudness. any input would be great and I would greatly appretiate any thoughts or response. thanks
Mike

 

Welcome to the forum.

As far as the coolant smell, you may need to replace your heater core behind the dash. They are well known to be common failure points on these trucks.

As far as the exhaust, a high flow catalytic converter will make your exhaust noticeably louder. Not double or anything, but noticeably.

 

Thanks. and yeah I mean no visible leaks so Ill deff look into that, and roughly how much is a high flow cat gonna cost me?

 

check your passenger floorboard for wetness also look on youtube for cherrybomb extreme

 

Two common converters a lot of guys go with, both Magnaflows (really good units):

The 94009.
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/MPE-94009/
And the 94109.
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/MPE-94109/

The only difference is the 94009 is 16 inches long, the 94109 is 13 inches long. Crawl underneath your truck and make sure your exhaust goes to a y-pipe before the cat. Some trucks right before your model year have a dual inlet, single outlet converter (no y-pipe).

 

For the longest time, I would get a faint smell of coolant when I was standing outside the truck, after it was driven for a while. I never saw any drips, or leaks until recently. At first I thought it was the water pump to intake hose, but after replacing it, I still had the smell. I thought it was that hose, because I started to see coolant running down along the timing cover gasket. I finally realized that it was actually leaking from that gasket. It was leaking at the top of the timing cover where the two water passages go through to the block. I'm actually still in the process of putting it all back together. The gasket had completely deteriorated at the outside edge of the two water passages.

 

You'll want this cat:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/MPE-23285/
Direct fit. No cutting, or welding needed to put this cat on. The one Jason posted is a universial. This one comes with new stainless-steel pipes and a new converter. Made my truck louder and gave me a good gain in the low end. Although they raised the price $50 from when I bought it 3 years ago.

 

Welding is the best way to do an exhaust system. Clamps fall off eventually, given enough time, and can have small leaks (they expand/contract with temps).

Its usually not a whole lot of money to pay a shop to do the welding/cutting if you don't have a welder, but its up to you.

 

Ha, I just have a Straight Pipe. Sounds good to me, My Dad had Dual Pipes going back, I wouldn't hate welding up a set of those, all original Dodge Sound, none of that fancy stuff!

 

I was gone for most of the day and got tons of useful feed back from you guys, thanks for all the great input. I'll deffinately be looking into that gasket and compairing pricing and quotes for the cat