I traded in the 96 on a 01. I'm fairly happy with it, but compared to the 96 the 01 is horrible on gas. I had a catback and a drop in K&N in my 96, but I doubt those would make a huge difference. I did go up in motor size from a 5.2 to the 5.9 though. Even though the entire time I'm signing the paperwork I'm saying to myself, "are you sure you want to get a 5.9"? I'm out on a business trip right now so I can't get home to work any on it. I've noticed the temp gauge on the 01 sits about 1/3 of the way up on the cluster, my 96 usually sat about 1/2 up. I know it's a factory gauge and it's about as reliable as a broken watch, but I'm suspect that the thermostat is maybe stuck and the truck is always running in open loop. I have to get a scanner on it and see what the ECM is actually seeing from the temp sensor. I figure a new set of plugs and a new thermostat might be the first things to do, but it hasn't thrown a check engine light but that doesn't necessarily mean anything eithor. Any particular mods though that anybody would recommend? I know that nothing is going to make a huge difference by itself and ensuring it is properly kept up. It's funny because my old truck got 14-16 in town and 16-18 on the highway. Normally it would equal out with me getting about 16-17 mpg for the entire tank being I do 1/2 mixed driving. Checked the 01 and it's getting 11 [sm=dontgetit.gif] Thanks a bunch for the ideas.

 

read this thread info on mpg improvements

if you were getting up to 18 on the hiway, you should have kept it. good mpg is tough to get on the dodge trucks.

there are all kinds of mods you can do, some will help and some will hurt mpg, just depends on which mod and combo you do. problem is when you do the mods, most of the time your foot is in it more to...

congrats on joining the 360 club!

 

Yeah, I thought about keeping the 96 really hard but with the number of miles on it I wasn't sure if I trusted it anymore. I got the 01 for about 17,000 out the door with only 40k on the clock so I figured it was worth it. I do alot of travelling with my wife and baby and with the intention of making a trip to Arizona pulling my S10 this summer, I didn't want to take any chances if you know what I mean. Yeah the 01 could leave me stranded too, but it has a warranty on it too vs the 96 with none. I thought I read someplace where the Hypertech seemed to help alot on the Ram trucks as well as the Fastman TB. Is this true? It looks like the Fastman in addition to eithor a cold air kit or a catback is the way to go. Thanks

 

Hypertech, Fastman (52mm in your case), flowmaster either 3" single or (real important for towing) 2.25" duals <- this pretty much equals the 3" single out. and the K&N intake kit (because of the heat shield).

This is where I'd start, any mod that reduces your low end torque will hurt your milage...

 

Steve, which one are you saying is better for towing? I think the single outlet 3" would be since it keeps a little back pressure up and that will keep the low end torgue up. Also, did you notice improvements in mpg's with the chip. I was lucking at getting the Jet stage 1 for mine.

 

from other users... Jet sucks. I have no experience with them, I'm a Hypertech guy. Superchips was also another good one but I have no experience with them. My hypertech adds plenty of hp/tq for my liking...

on the exhaust, if you do the math, dual 2.25's is really close to the 3" single. it's the 2.5" duals that will kill your torque. I know this 1st hand from experimenting with my truck...

 

I just ordered a stainless 3" Magnaflow Catback. Figured I would start there and see. As for the duals out of the back 2.5's being too big, that's what I had on my 5.2, but it was non mandrel bent. I don't want to offend anybody here, but saying taking away backpressure will kill lowend isn't necessarly true in a non extreme situation. I had a 3" exhaust with dual 2.5 tailpipes on my S10 when it still had the internally stock 4.3 V6. I have the dyno graphs I can post if anybody is interested, but I picked up well over 20 rwhp and about 20 rwtq on the V6 by just changing the exhaust from a single 2.5 to a single 3" cat with dual 2.5's out the back. It made the same torque @ 2,000 rpms with both but it picked up so much more midrange. I will go as far as to say though that an improperly tuned exhaust will kill your powerband. IE using a large header primary with a short collector will not allow headers to properly scavage and so on, but that is with custom headers. As in the world of a catback on a otherwise factory fuel injected motor you don't want it to flow too much due to the O2's not being able to get a proper reading and proper heating from the exhaust. This is somewhat averted due to the newer O2's having a heater element inside but it does have an effect. The larger you make the exhaust techically the closer you should move the O2's towards the cylinder heats to get the appropriate heat and give somewhat correct readings. But that is merely an example and many other factors play into this IE camshaft overlap ect ect.

 

Thought about it somemore and I came to this conclusion from doing the work on the 96:

The factory cat is a restriction. The factory pipes coming off the manifolds are 2" and the factory outlet was 2.5 on my 96. Well the combined volume of both the 2" primary pipes coming off the manifolds is 6.8 and a single 3" is 7.065. Now this is based on if you are after max flow and power, very little else is considered here. Food for thought though.