Here's the situation, I know very little about cars and trucks in general, but I'm resourceful when I have a general idea of what needs to be done. I was hoping I could get some guidance in getting more power out of my Ram I just bought. I got it from a family friend for $3k, I just rolled it over 60k miles (they rarely used it as a farm truck) and it just had a used tranny put in at 58k miles before I bought it. It seems to be a steal so far as the only problems I have are cosmetic, and the cruise control doesn't work....but my main concern is this thing has no *****. I've been told the 318 can be modified pretty easily to have decent power, and that's what I'm looking for guidance on. I'm not trying to turn it into a race truck or anything, I just want to have fun driving it. I have about +/- 2.5k limit that I'd like to put into the performance side of this project and I still need to make it look pretty afterwards so I'm not trying to go nuts. If you have any advice, please make it easy for a non-gearhead to understand. Also feel free to make fun of my lack of knowledge as I deserve it for jumping into this.

 

My 96 318 has 10 k less than you . I'm swapping a 360 . Power is good but just not at hwy speeds that I drive . I'm tired of dropping gears to move .

I run a mopar perf PCM , MSD ignition , 50mm TB and 3" exhaust on my 5.2 jeep and wish I would have just dropped in a 5.9 .

 

Yea, I know the 360 is a beast but I really don't want to do an engine swap, besides, the heaviest towing it will be doing is a 21' which it pulls decent but gets sketchy on gravel inclines. I've heard the SCT Tuner is awesome if there are other mods done but I have no clue where to start with that.

 

Less restrictive intake, exhaust and a tuner. Thats about it unless you start digging into the engine. Or gears. But that gets expensive too.

 

If you go with a SCT tuner, go with HemiFever. A lot of guys on here run tuners from him, myself included.

 

Make sure all maintenance is up to date. (especially the ignition system)

Fix the plenum, or get a different intake.

Harland Sharp 1.7 ratio roller rockers.

Long-tube headers, free-flowing exhaust. (not necessarily duals though, just free-flowing.)

SCT tuner will help, but, not as much as it does on later year trucks. (simply because of differences in programming from Dodge over the years.)

Drop-in high flow air filter. (Skip the CAI systems, they don't do anything for you.)

That's about 1500 bucks or so of 'stuff', and even at that, it will probably only get you 15-20 horsepower..... maybe a little more.

 

Personally $100 per horsepower would not be worth it. Just drive it and enjoy it for what it is.

 

Drop a 50mm throttle body on it . I just tested one on a 5.2 this morning . Impressive little bolt on to a stock truck for $150 .

 

X2! If it's not bad now it will be! I would replace it with the Hughes kit. Make the motor breath easier, Headers-duel exhaust. Or if you want just replace the stock cat with a magna flow cat. larger tb, M1 intake. The biggest bank for the buck is a cam but you may not want to tear into the motor.

 

Thanks for the reccomendations! How many of these parts would you reccomend I install myself vs having a shop work on it?(I don't work on vehicles much, nor do I have a ton of tools but I want to save as much $ as possible, and I can follow directions.)