Does anyone have suggestions for adding horsepower to a 1500 with modified intake? Such as a cold air intake or something like that? I would love to hear your advice!

 

Superchips 3865 - buy it immediately - I will finance - just kidding

 

Programmer as mentioned and gears.

 

CAI and exhaust will free up a few ponies, but not nearly as much as they'd want you to believe. An e-fan will open up some low-end power. Gears won't add horsepower, just some torque.

 

Usually the "BIG THREE" mods are a cat-back exhaust, CAI and a tuner. Mainly because of the ease of installation and cost. The gains can be as high as about 5 RWHP on the exhaust, 5 RWHP on the CAI and about 15 RWHP on the tuner. Basically you'd have about $1000'ish on the three combined (assuming name brand parts and paying for labor) and get aobut a 25 HP total gain. $1000 for 25 HP would be considered pretty economical in the performance world.

Obviously if you make your own CAI (roughly $60) and install the exhaust yourself (saving probably $300 in labor) you might could get all three for in the $500-$600 range...

 

Hammer summed it up well. The bottom line is to really get any gains, you need to do multiple Mods. Just adding one of those things will not do much. The least performing item on its own would be the induction. On a stock truck, it will add less then 5 HP.

 

Yep, it's ALL about combining mods. Kinda the "weakest link" effect. A CAI doesn't do much by itself because the stock throttle body, tune, exhaust manifolds and exhaust itself can't make use of the added air intake.
Now you get a tune on it, ported TB, headers and free up the exhaust and the whole thing together makes a LOT more HP and Torque than the sum of each individually. Go even further and do heads and a cam and now you're really talkin'. Some cams and other engine internals SPEC they need some of these other mods for them to work...

 

What kind of exhausts are you finding the in 300-400 dollar range?

 

Quite a few cat back models in that price range. Lots of threads on them in FAQ section with some reviews.

A quick Google search turned up one instantly:

http://3rdstrikeperformance.com/inde...oducts_id=9771

A Flowmaster kit too:

http://www.partstrain.com/store/deta...2496450907exsy

But again, this is just one piece of the puzzle. Adding a high flow intake system and a high flow exahust will help, but with a stock throttle body and stock exhaust manifolds you are not going to see huge gains.

 

That's what it should cost to buy a nice high flow muffler, Y-pipe and labor for a guy to weld it all up and bend the tubing how you please