2005 Dodge Ram Hemi Performance Truck Build - Pandora's Box

"You're gonna have to work for it," said Editor Bolig when the idea of making a reasonable street-performance truck out of a newly acquired '05 Hemi Ram came up. His prophetic jab would ultimately become a curse.

Our initial idea was to document every step of our truck's modifications with a pass on a neighboring dyno after each modification. The steps we thought would be a cinch: a cold air kit install, a header and exhaust bolt-in, and a new performance programmer. Easy, right? Well, it would seem that "the best laid plans of men" would be our undoing in what we had hoped to be a reasonably easy project.

With manufacturers offering the public nearly brainless bolt-ins and upgrades, we here at Mopar Muscle only wanted to show how a few simple alterations to an already stout 5.7-liter Hemi could transform it from mild-mannered to a fierce pavement-pounder. But fate would ultimately make us eat the words "easy" and "simple." A list of extraneous circumstances, accidents, bad judgment, weather, and blatant screw-ups cost us precious time and our patience.

First, we wanted to get a base run-a preliminary pass on the dyno to give us a rear-wheel-horsepower number. What we got instead was a series of "Check Engine" lights, electrical gremlins, and a downed truck for nearly two months. We ended up bouncing the Ram from one dealership to another, finally landing at Plant City Motors. Our technician, Dan, took the flawed Hemi on as a personal challenge and gave diagnosing the issue his all. Apparently, the hard pulls made on the dyno unearthed a succession of electrical gremlins that tripped the sequential five-volt meters that circle the engine block, monitoring crank and cam speed, and other various functions. Flustered, Five Star resolved to have our trusty technician simply "throw parts" at it until the problem went away. A cam sensor, crank position sensor, forward control module, two five-volt meters, and a wiring harness later, the truck seemed to be ok.

Since our Ram didn't like the dyno, we opted to test our truck the old fashioned way-on the track. In preparing the Ram for its debut at the Lakeland Motorsports Park, this author punctured the front tire while pulling into the lift at the shop, which thwarted our evening's plans. With the help of Tony Muniz at Tire Kingdom in Palm Harbor, Florida, we were ready for the next weekend until we were rained out by the tail of Hurricane Katrina. Undaunted, we pushed our trial run back another week. Finally, with the truck at the track and ready to go, an electrical surge zonked out the tower's computers, allowing us to make as many passes as we pleased, but with no time slips.

Another week clicked by on the calendar, and we returned to the Lakeland Motorsports Park ready for another shot at the track with our stock truck. On a cloudy afternoon, the '05 Ram shot past the eighth-mile traps at 72 mph clicking off a 10.33. Now, many readers out there may not be acclimated to eighth-mile times, so the easiest way is to multiply the elapsed time by 1.57 to get an estimate as to how the vehicle would perform in the quarter-mile. With that equation, our time comes in at a 16.22. Not too bad for a peg leg, 5,000-pound truck, but not good enough.

At the trackside pits, the Airaid cold air kit was hurriedly bolted on, a process that only took a meager fourteen minutes. What we learned was: 1) the Airaid kit does not require the removal of the base of the stock box, as their air shield clips onto it in seconds, and 2) you might not feel the difference in the seat of your pants, but you'll sure hear the difference as the unrestrictive intake tube roars like a waterfall, and you'll surely see the improvement in your mpg when you finally decide to drive within the confines of legal speeds.

In addition, a billet-aluminum throttle body spacer was given to us by Crane Cams to see if any improvements could be seen. The spacer is a CNC'd piece, but we couldn't really tell any measurable difference with or without it, though we were sure an engine dyno would render different results. With the intake installed, we improved our best e.t. to a 10.27 at 72 mph. With no significant gain in our mph, our estimated quarter-mile time came out to a 16.11, shaving off a tenth of a second.

We came back to the pits to let the engine cool. As we did so, we pulled out Superchips' new '05 Ram programmer-the FlashPaq-a super-easy programmer box that quickly saved the stock vehicle computer sequence in its memory and swapped it for their "87 Octane" setting. Superchips advertises a significant improvement in vehicle fuel consumption, better running temperatures, and improved efficiency and performance. With such high claims, we thought we'd see for ourselves. Within ten minutes, the truck was ready for another pass. This time, our best was a 9.82 at 74 mph, or a 15.42 at the quarter-mile, making us believers in Superchips' claims.

We took the Ram back to the shop and readied ourselves for the Bassani Xhaust. The good people at Bassini provided us with two exhaust kits: an avant-garde dual side-pipe, doglegged design, and a more traditional single-tube kit, which resembled the factory layout. The whole direction that we wanted to go with this build was to improve the performance of the stock Ram without it looking like a project vehicle, so we opted for the single-tube setup for this test.

The Bassani system required a lot more fabrication than a simple bolt-in. Considerable cutting and welding were required. The tabs on the nuts for the bolts on the upper A-arms needed to be moved to allow the tubes to pass. The factory catalytic Y-pipe needed to be cut and welded to the pipe bends that Bassani provided. The single-tube system was so large that Tech Editor Dave Young joked that we might had been sent the Turbo Diesel exhaust system by accident.

With the exhaust leak-free and finished from the headers back to the massive polished chrome tip, we arrived again at the track. With little effort, the Ram blew off a 9.71 at 75 mph, equating to a 15.2 on our calculators. With each pass, the truck began to show other modifications it would require to knock more time off the e.t., such as an anti-spin differential (since ours came with 3.92 gears, but with only a peg leg) and better tires. We opted to switch the Superchips program to the 91-octane as we filled it up with the expensive gas for our final bout at the track. The truck struggled to keep the tires from spinning all the way down the track, indicating that it was making far more power than its rearend could handle. The best we could muster was a 9.64 at 78 mph, another 15.2.

The final time might be deceiving since certain factors need to be inserted into the equation, such as the truck's lack of traction due to the steep 3.92 gears and only having a peg-leg, while the 91-octane program was producing so much power that we consistently hazed the tires off the line. As of now, we need to sit back and think of the best way to get our Ram to hook up.