What's the budget for your rebuild?

Stock heads have issues cracking valve seats.. best to replace them with better units. Odessa has 'em in varying flavors starting under 600 a pair.

Bit more cam wouldn't hurt...

Roller Rockers wouldn't hurt either.

 

Totally off topic... BUT, I gotta know. Have you had any ISX's in that ate the lobes off of the cams yet? We've had two that did that. I've never seen another engine do that before other than the older 5.7 vortecs. Those twin cam cummins HAUL @SS when they work!

 

After having two 5.2 rams and one 5.9, I would do a 360 swap. Same gas mileage, but feel so different, at least mine do, maybe my like new 01 with the 5.2 has been double death flashed. Besides the usual software update sticker on the PCM, there is another update sticker from july 2012.