Hi everyone.

I have a 2005 Dodge Ram 1500 with a Hemi.I recently had dual exhaust with a glass pack installed. My engine has been sputtering/hesitating when cruising at 1100-1500 RPMs ever since the install. I just installed a K&N Air Intake Kit, new spark plugs, and cleaned the throttle body and still the hesitation. Do you think this has something to do with the fuel filter or fuel pump? Or possibly a backpressure issue with having the glass pack installed?

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

 

Might be a back pressure ormore likely a scavengingproblem. Are you "H-piped"?

I am by no means an exhaust expert, but I've done my own (and quite a few for friends) for 25 years now since I got my first car at 16 (Nova 350 SS that I welded a Cherry Bomb on) and have seen a few instances where the addition of a glass pack or the complete cutting out of a muffler &/or cats produced your symptoms at low rpm's...

If it's back pressure and you also ditched the cats, you may need to put them back on. I had a small, but noticeable, loss of some low end torque after putting my headers on. So, instead of doing the intended "non-fouler" trick, I just welded the cats back inline behind the header collector. I had to exend the O2 sensor wires about a foot and a half, but that fixed theslight performanceissue and I didn't have to "rig it" to get rid of the CEL. The Hemi cats are said to be among the lowest restricting stock cats in the industry anyway.
If it's a scavenging issue, the additionof headers will do wonders for that hesitation, often going the other way and having better gains in that rpm range than stock...

 

Well I still have the cats installed yet. It goes from two cats, into single pipe (stock diameter), into glass pack, and then split back into dual once again. Is this known as being "H-piped"?

Before I had the glass pack, I had a magnaflow muffler. Everything worked fine then, but I wanted a little more sound. Put the glass pack on, sounds great, just the whole hesitation thing is pissing me off. MPG went down a little too. Stock had 2 cats, a resonator, and a muffler. resonator and muffler are now gone.

Do you think I should possibly put the resonator back on? I don't think I want to do new headers just yet. I might just end up putting the magnaflow back on. What do ya think?

 

The symptoms kind of tell me that you are not scavenging all of the exhaust out of the chamber when it's firing. At higher rpm's it doesn't show as enough power is built up to minimize the effect, but at lower rpm's it causes what you describe. It sounds like even though you put in a very unrestrictive muffler, you have a restriction/back pressure issue.
Basically, inside the cylinders they suck in air and gas and expell exhaust, while they aretrying to spew out the exhaust the exhaust ahead of it is trying to get out of the way, but it soundslike it's having a bit of trouble. That's why headers are so efficient, they are designed to minimize this effect, resulting in both performance and mpg gains. Designed properly, they "scavenge" each cylinders exhaust into the collector at a perfect timing so no two cylinders arrive at the same time, virtually eliminating this mixing or back flow of exhaust gases. Mid or Long Tube Headers is something you should look into at some point.
Simply ditching a resonator would have nothing to do with it, I wouldn't think. Was anything else changed and/or re-routed or did they simply just cut out the muffer & put the new one in? It kinda sounds like they created a restriction somewhere. Bad bend, crimp or something like that.
Is it possible for you to crawl under and snap a pic or pics from the cats back? I might be able to see something that stands right out.
The only other thing that I've seen cause this is basically just the opposite, where an exhaust flows so smoothly that NO backpressure exists at all. An engine needs a little bit to create low end torque, like I said above, I had this to a tiny degree after adding LT Headers to the system that already had a cat-back and CAI. Ditching the cats cut out what little backpressure I needed. But I highly doubt that you'd be that free with the cats and stock manifold, even with a relatively straight through muffler. Plus, if it was flowing that well, you'd be amazed at the HP gains at mid & high rpm's.

 

Thanks for all of the helpful info.

I took some pictures, how do I create a photo gallery like yours?

 

DodgeGirl did an excellent step by step on how to create a gallery.

Go here:
https://dodgeforum.com/m_198947/tm.htm

read, and set one up...

 

Nice. I took some pictures from the cat-back. Let me know what you think. Maybe the bends are crappy, the pipes do look a little bumpy from being bent.

So you think headers might possibly solve the problem hey. Thanks for the nice descriptions, everything you said makes a lot of sense.

 

I wanted to add one more thing. It has beenwarming up where I live, and as it gets warmer and more humid (like this morning) it seems to hesitate worse than usual. Any idea why this might be happening?