Alright y’all the time has come to build my 5.9 magnum in the swamp donkey. She’s burning oil as well as leaking it. Also leaks coolant and the tranny has started to go out so it’s time for a build. I’m trying to figure out if I’m going to get another engine to do this with or be down a truck while I build. The issue I’m having is people are wanting anywhere from 500-1000$ for a used 5.9 block. Then comes into play the prices for the intake manifolds and what not. Everything I find online seems to be from Hughes engines and they’re overpriced if I’ve ever seen it. I’m looking at convenience and universal connection for my build which is why I don’t want to use Hughes parts. It seems like every part they sell requires another special part that only they sell!
Im wanting to build this truck at stock bore and stroke. I might bore it .30 over just so the new rings will seal correctly. I’m aiming at 9:1 compression and a cam at 222:226 and either buying heads with a 62cc chamber or porting mine to it. I’m open to any recommendations or input y’all have! Also if you know of deals on parts or someone selling a build I’m not opposed to that! The more money I can save on this the more I have for turbos down the road!

 

Unfortunately, there just isn't a lot of aftermarket support for the magnum engines any more. If you want an aftermarket fuel injection manifold, you get three choices, stock kegger (or modded....), Hughes Air Gap, or M1. The M1 has become darn near impossible to find.... and if you can, price is quite similar to the hughes piece.

Pricing where you are is just crazy. I couldn't sell a RUNNING motor for 200 bucks...... And yes, it's a 5.9..... I still have it..... Want it? I can check with Fastenal, and see how much they would want for shipping.... Probably still be under the 500 dollar mark. It's sitting on a stand in my garage. I wouldn't just install it, I think a good refresh is definitely in order... (It ran good when it was pulled, but, that's been a couple years ago.)

Still a good selection of cams, and other valve train toys. Header selection is a bit limited, but, they are still out there, ranging from inexpensive, to truly outrageous. (800 bucks for headers? Really??)

If you are planning on forced induction, then manifold choice becomes a lot less of an issue.

 

Message me. I’ll defin be interested come the beginning of December. The headers are ridiculous! I mean I found a decent set out of hookers for $300 but that’s still high considering they are shorty headers! I am planning forced induction but I still have to find a good manifold because of the stupid plenum plate being a must have! I want to try and find a sniper intake for a ls3 and see how difficult it would be to mount up on my engine!

 

Did you ever look on craigs list? I see 360's for sale(more 5.2's) but they are out there. Modman is another intake you may consider, $529 according to the Indy site.
https://www.allpar.com/mopar/performance/manifolds.html

 

I don't see any reason why you would want to bore the engine .030" over. I rebuilt my 5.2L when it had over 100K miles on it when a rod started knocking. Dodge/Chrysler uses heavy nickel content in the blocks, which makes them very durable.

If you want to save money and the truck is not your only vehicle, my suggestion is to use what you have. Tear it all down and inspect every single part. You'd be surprised at what can be reused. You can cut the runners down on the intake for better breathing rather than spending $$$ on a performance intake. Tear it down and make a plan before blinding spending time and money on wild ideas.

 

my reason to build it 0.030 over would be to make sure the new pistons have a perfect seal. On every engine I’ve built I have never had an issue after boring over but I’ve had more than one issue with throwing in stock bore and the rings not sealing. It isn’t my only vehicle but as stated I want to drive this one while I build the other. I would rather build my engine all the way and have the block the only thing OE on it. If I had the money I would buy a violet block as well. This truck when built will be getting either a set of turbos or a giant shot of nitrous which is the reason for the specs stated earlier. This will be a race truck so I’m building it as such

 

Your best manifold choice is going to be the Hughes if running stock stroke/bore and compression. 2bbl M1 is going to be hard to find though it would perform nearly identically, 4bbl would be stupid to install (no tq production). Airgap will make tq as well as hp for that heavy truck to move. The indy would be even worse than a 4bbl m1 and would end up costing you 800+ as it's not machined for mpfi. It outflows all the magnum specific head options out there. These engines actually have a decently supported aftermarket compared to many other platforms. Hipotek does great work and has a nice selection of parts. Headers I would go straight to Pacesetter longtubes, protuninglab sells knockoff copies of them, otherwise spintech sells awesome stuff though it is expensive.

I would also highly suggest facebook as a parts source. Sounds crazy but the emptiness of the forums these days is because everybody is on facebook. There's numerous pages specific to these trucks, engines, etc. Honestly where a large portion of my parts come from. Throttle body, intake manifold, headers all came from there. I have heads I got there waiting in my storage unit, got in on a group buy deal for billet aluminum Vortech/Paxton supercharger brackets. Rockers came from a buddy of mine but other than that and tuning, all my hard parts came from facebook sales. Hell my truetrack did too.

 

what fb groups? sounds like you are sitting at the end of the ram parts rainbow and i want in lol!

 

While you definitely see more activity on Facebook, I really miss the days of the active forums. I'm not sure if it's just that it's a younger crowd owning these trucks since they're old and cheap now, or what, but the 2nd Gen FB group I'm a part of is about the worst group of Dodge guys I've ever come across. There is soo much incorrect information being thrown around, when people ask for help no one ever actually posts anything to help, people just want to troll each other, etc. This group has almost 20k members, so it's unbelievable how few people there are that have a clue in it. The forums are much much more informative and helpful.

That said for parts, you probably do see many more for sale on FB than the forums.

 

Dakota rt classifieds, Dodge & Jeep 5.2 & 5.9 magnum v8 performance & tips, FlyinRyan Performance page. Etc
I'm only 22 but i do as well. Information was better than and idiots posted less. Don't get me wrong, we were all dumb at one point (i was and early posts reflect that) but Facebook makes it so easy for them lol.
I'm guessing that group you're talking about is Dodge Ram Trucks (2nd gen), right? I try to both try and help as well as troll the crap out of it. Kinda surprised i haven't been banned