Been watching this sight for over a month now and it is by far the most helpful vehicle specific site i've found yet. Anyways after reading everything I decided to get a ram over a silverado. Gotta love being the biggest truck around . I put a down payment on a 2003 QCSB 1500 with the hemi of course. Only thing i dont like is that it is two tone black and silver. I plan on getting rhino lining on the silver like i did on my 98 silverado that was the same way. Question for you guys is, Has anyone simply just done hurculiner instead of line-x, rhino, etc? And the overhead read 10.2 mpgs from all city. So would you guys agree, immidiate addtions would be fluids swapped to synthetic's, new plugs, better wires, CAI, as well as SC 3815, and tonneau cover to get some better mpgs (And i know its a big truck and i didnt buy it for gas mileage but when you can get better why not right?). it has the 3.92 gears in the diffs. Thanks!

 

First off congrats on the new truck.
some pics would be helpful to see what your talking about, if you mean on the rocker panels i have used with success a product called rocker-shutz, i'm still not quite sure where your two tone is at or where you mean to apply the bed-liner at. i believe superchips has got the 3865 out, maybe one of the guys runnin programmers will post on it.

 

Do not use the herculiner. I used it on a Toyota I had a few years back. I followed the directions to a tee. Long story short it peeled and looked bad. It was one of the reason's I was glad to see the truck go. Go to Line-X, I did this on my last truck and I will never use another brand of bedliner again. As for the Mods it sounds like you got it covered. I just got the 3865 for my truck but I have the 5.9 so it is completely different application. Congrats on the new truck.

 

if all your doin is city driving then the 10mpg is about right. and i cant believe you dont like the 2 tone!!! i love my silver 2 tone, but thats all right. as far as the mpgs...you should definatly switch out all your fluids regardeless since you bought the truck used. the CAI or tonneau cover wont do much in the way of mpgs, the cai will give you more power but most people dont see a noticeable mpg gain. how many miles are on the rig btw. check to see what condition your steering system is in as well.

 

The only items that improved gas mileage for me was going 100% synthetic (worth about 1/2 mpg) and adding air to the tires. Running 42psi front, 37 rear (gained a full mpg) getg good even wear on both my 17s and 20s. Here in the northeast, I gain 1-2 mpgs from the cold of winter to the summer. I has to do with the winter blended gasoline and the extented rich cycle.

 

welcome to the forum and congrats on your new truck. Lets see some pics.

 

Welcome.
I aplaud you for doing your homework before asking your first question. Switching the fluids will work great for better MPG, but the best mod I have made so far for better MPG was the E-fan. Search it out, it works really well...

 

Yeah Ive got Herculiner on mine and its starting to peel a bit here and there... mostly on the chrome where I didnt sand it because I was too impatient... but I think it really has to do with your Demovraphic, I live in florida and it looks like pdavis lives somewhere north of the carolinas or even on the west coast somewhere so it could just be the weather the causin the problems. But if you have the money to drop on Line-X do it, its far better quality and it only takes 3 hours to do the bed, so im sure youd be outta there in 1 1/2 tops...

 

Welcome to the forum. Post up some pics when you get a chance. To answer your question about MPG's, you have a good list started there but I would add an e-fan to that list if mpg's is something that you are concerned about. It is the mod that made the most improvement in my mpg's out of all of the mods I have done.

 

To answer the other questions. Yes I am talking about getting the rockers lined. So basically the bottom 6 inches of the truck. And i'm not concerned about mileage really. But, like I said. If you can get the truck to perform better, and get better mpgs why not do it? Big trucks Big Gas bill. Gotta love it. Offroadteacher, I saw your DIY about the e-fans but didn't read a ton into it. I will have to take a second look at it