My grandfather passed about a year ago, and my grandmother has decided to sell his truck, and I cannot stand to see it go. Its a 2001 - 2500 single cab auto SLT. It'll be a daily driver and occationally tow 10K. I'm just looking for the common areas I should address first to make the truck a productive and reliable member of the family. I see that fuel supply to the injection pump is critical, so its sounds like a Air Dog or similar might be in order.

I come from the 1st gen world where mods are cheap and simple as turning a screw, so please bare with me if this comes as a stupid question to some.

Thanks in advance.

-Jeff

 

Sorry about your grand dad. Glad you're keeping his truck. Gauges, fuel, steering, cracked dash, chip & injectors. Lots of reading here & elsewhere. Don't go with an AGR box for the steering.

 

Jeff, sorry for your loss as well.

That being said, there really isn't a lot to worry about other than the fuel supply.

Unless you are going to sell your first gen, I wouldn't even bump up the power, they are pretty peppy, and you indicated it would be a DD.

Is it 4X4, Auto or Stick, etc, give us some details.

 

Reliability was the key thing I was going for with the mods I made to my 2000. As you seem to already know, gauges and a good lift pump are the first thing to do. Beyond that I started looking at things not directly related to the engine:

Aftermarket plug-in harness for headlights to take load off headlight switch
Steering stabilizer (commonly called DSS, but there's another brand out there)
Exhaust brake

With the auto in your grandfather's old truck, you should do a tranny temp gauge, something like the Mag Hytec double-deep tranny pan, and maybe even an improved valve body and torque converter, if not a full rebuild by a company like DTT, ATS, or Goerend.

Another common thing to take care of that I haven't seen much discussion about lately, is the crankcase vent that indirectly clogs up the radiator. If you can take out the radiator and hose it out real good, and then reroute the crankcase vent tube into the frame rail, you'll be doing yourself a huge favor.

Mike

 

Its a 2wd auto single cab. Unfortunantly, selling the 1st get is on my mind. Whats the best performance upgrade to start with?

 

Easiest is something like the Edge EZ. It should give you 20 - 30 HP and increase your mileage a bit. Next I'd probably free up the exhaust with either a 4" exhaust, or just replace the stock muffler with straight pipe (which is what I did). Doesn't have much performance benefit, but will help your exhaust temps.

You want to be careful increasing power with a stock auto. Beyond the EZ you could probably also add some kind of stage 1 injector before you're significantly risking the tranny, depending on how you drive it. For injectors I went with Formula 1's Mach 1 injectors and absolutely love them.

Mike