Let me introduce myself:
My name is Alex. I am from maryland and I just purchased a Ram 1500 Sport, but I have never owned a truck. I'm a pretty handy mechanic, I built some LS1's for older Camaro's, done some transmission work so I know my way around an engine bay.

This is the truck:


A few things I was wondering about our trucks...

1. What are a few respectable brands for chips/programmers, and which is better for the results if I was some more ponies from my 5.9?

2. What are some good, deep, kinda throaty exhaust setups? (I've heard good things about Flowmaster 44's.)

3. Lastly, how do I take this damn door panel off to swap my front speakers?

(If you guys have a writeup on the head unit, front, and rear speaker replacment that would same me so many headaches.)

 

Welcome to the forum. Sweet lookin truck you got there.
For the door panel, there is a screw in the upper handle by the window/lock switches. take it out, then take the handle out. take the screw by the mirror controls out, then what I do is usually take a flathead screwdriver or similar and start up by the lock and carefully pop the plastic retainer clips out of the door itself, they run down both sides and along the bottom. be careful with this though, as the clips may have been in since the factory and are likely to break. then you can just wiggle the panel up and off once it's loose. i usually have to pull up on the release lever to get it out of the panel.

 

sweet ride. superchips has a good rep. check out the FQ section.

 

superchips would be the way to go unless you are planning on doing some more performance mods on the truck(heads,cam,rockers, etc.) then you may want to look at a custom tune from Hemifever from SCT. it all depends on what you plan to do with your truck but start with the basics, like Deathflash and the plenum gasket and go from there

 

Thx, so what is death flash and what do I need for the plenum gasket

 

Check out the 2nd Gen FAQ section. Has those answers and a whole lot more.

What year is that beautiful truck?

 

deathflash and the plenum are somewhat related, use the search at the top of the page and you can spend hours reading about it.

in a nutshell- plenum gasket failure, 99% of our trucks have this issue, the kegger intakes on our trucks have a plenum plate on the bottom. the intake is aluminum and the plenum plate is steel. over time when your motor cycle through it engine cycles the plate will warp causing the gasket to break and suck oil out of the lifter valley. when dodge heard of this they came up with the deathflash to reduce pingin, gas mileage and power. it was alot cheaper for them to flash all of the computers than to replace all the gaskets.
use the search and be prepared to learn alot

 

SCT is the only way to go as handheld turners go. +1 for the plenum gasket, get all that fixed then you will be good to go but that should be first on your list.

 

if you need more info on the SCT Pm Hemifever or email him a hemifever@aol.com. he will explain what he does and what application is best for your truck, by the way master, welcome to DF, let the mods begin

 

All you have to do is search the forum for deathflash and plenum gasket,
that will give you all the info you need
sweet looking truck btw