Hello everyone, I have been a long time member at some other Dodge Forums but due to inactivity on it I started searching for a new one and found this one. I have owned many Mopars over the years and plan on continuing this. Currently. one of my mopars is a 2003 Dodge Ram 1500 4x4 QC hemi 20's and 3.92s. I love the truck.

But i have a question; the hemi is great but sometimes i feel it may be a little doggish on my highway trips. I have taken care of this truck from the beginning with synthetic oil, quality filters, and 89 octane. It currently has 22,000 on the clock. I have heard that on the 2005?+ that Dodge revised the Electronic Throttle Control on theses trucks to make them more responsive. Is this true??? If so, is there anything us guys with the older models can do about ours?? TIA-

 

From what I have read, on the 2003's you can actually snip the wire going to the ECM, and disable the torque management all together. You can then put in a switch or whatever. It supposedly firms up the shifts an AMAZING amount. I tried it on my 2005, and it disabled the torque management alright... I couldn't get the truck over 2000rpms no matter what I Did. So I just spliced the wire back together and I'm fine now. But yeah, supposed to work WONDERS for the 2003s.

It's in the engine compartment, on the passenger side. There's a grey box with 4 plugs going into it... If you pull out the very bottom plug, look for the yellow wire with the green stripe... Snip it and go for a spin... If it didn't work for you, splice it back together, no harm done.

Actually, you could try just unplugging the whole connector, it will disable your shift light, and throw and engine code, but you should be able to see the difference in torque... THEN if you like it, you can go snipping the wire.

 

What gears do you have? I put 4:56 gears in my truck and it made a huge difference in the way it drives.
More response off th eline and it keeps it in a much better rpm range at highway speeds. Not too high to make a difference in fuel mileage either. I have an 04 so I can't do the "wire trick" and I probably wouldn't anyway.

 

hmm ill have to get up the courage to do try that out on my truck-i have 3.92 gears with 20's

 

You can do eeeeeeeeeeeeet!



Let us know how it turns out.
Like I said, how much courage does it take just to unplug the whole housing? Takes 5 minutes of your time to test it out. Yes, you will lose your dash lights, and god knows what else, but after you're going going for a 5 minute romp, just detach the negative battery terminal and reset the computer. No more trouble light.