Hi Everyone, Happy Easter. The name's Dave and I have a 1997 Ram 2500 V8 Extended Cab Long Bed. I've been an avid reader for sometime now and finally joined.

Here's the deal,
I don't think the ol' dodge is living up to her potential, or I just expect too much... It's not much past stock, so I know that's an issue, I'm working on that. Exhaust and cold air on the way. Tune up coming soon too. Tuner maybe when $$ gets available. When towing about 4000 pounds, hilly highway driving, I get owned by my buddys 1500 Hemi Sport towing 2000 pounds more than me. Even a 4.7 Ram with a similar load spanked me. I have her mashed and it won't get any higher than 3000 in third.
I do get better gas mileage, though. 11.25 loaded to his 10.5(hemi). No pings or anything like that, run 93 when I tow though.
Its not a real go getter unloaded either...

I've got 4.10 gears and stock tires. Should I expect more?
Checked the plenum, don't see any oil, but thinking of changing anyway, just to be sure. I notice on the hills I lose vacuum and the heater vents go back to the defrost setting. Checked the pcm and and everywhere I can think of, but see no evidence of death flash.

Just making sure I'm moving in the right direction here. All suggestions are appreciated.

 

Plenum is blown. Theres no way around it. Its a design flaw, EVERYONE with a magnum v6 or v8 will have this problem.. The gasket is 99.99999% blown since you've towed. Make sure you dont have the deathflash either.

 

Oh yeah, ptolly the plenum, i know mine is gone and i have the deathflash. just waiting on the time and money to take care of both of them

 

If your vents switch to defrost, you have a vac leak. A big one. That is most likely the plenum.

You won't be able to keep up with a hemi stock to stock, the newer 5.7's put out 390 HP to the flywheel and even the 4.7's out torque the older 5.2's down low. The stock 5.2 put out 230 hp max and the 5.9 put out 245HP max. A low compression ratio on these trucks is the real silent killer of power. No vehicles on the road today run a 9:1 ratio.

You're on the right track with the 4.10 gears, but go a small tire, like 28" total diameter if you want some real stump pulling torque.

Don't forget either that the 5.2 and 5.9 engines are glorified A blocks, the tech really hasn't changes since the 70's on them.

All said and done, the cheapest way to get near a hemi is a supercharger or turbo with mild boost on a stock truck. Cams, heads, and other stuff just won't do it IMHO.

 

To add to your post aim, the newer (I think 08 and up) 4.7L motors have 310 hp at the flywheel (he got spanked by one of them too).

You say that heads won't cut it as far as getting you up there in the 300hp range. Do you remember Alabamaram? he put a set of aftermarket heads on his and gained 70hp according to the dyno, that sounds like some good progress to me.
I would imagine that with a good set of heads and a bigger cam that you could get somewhere in the neighborhood of 100hp over stock. That isn't anything to complain about.
100hp along with discreetly disconnecting a spark plug wire or two on the newer Ram that you're racing would be win for sure.

Did you ever put your truck on the dyno after you put that new cam in?

 

No, I do remember that, but his level of porting would cost you about $2000. And he'd still have 90hp to go to get to the 390HP of a hemi.

Ran into some snags with that cam and it needed to come out before I ever got to mess with it. I'll have to screw with it this summer to see where I'm at.

 

I don't expect I'll ever see hemi numbers, but I would definitely like to hold my own a little better. Especially against an '05 4.7l. I might look into the smaller tire too. Kinda looks a little funny with the 245's on it now, though. After I pay uncle Sam on or before the fifteenth, I'll be ordering that plenum plate.

 

I checked for a plenum leak the other day when I cleaned my throttle body and it is blown. How do you check for the deathflash?

 

Ok the hemi is not a fair race but getting spanked by the 4.7 tells me something is wrong, do you lose any oil? check for deathflash

 

There is tons of threads about death flash, look at the top of the screen there is a search feature, type in Deathflash and you will get one hell of a response of threads.

There is a sticker on your PCM if it has death flash or not, i dont remember what it says but you can find the threads with pictures of the computers that have the stickers on them.

Silver dodge actually did a full write up on it also, heres the link for that one

https://dodgeforum.com/forum/2nd-gen...explained.html