My 01 Ram 1500 everyday driver is getting tired. I'm going to build another engine and do a swap. I'd like to do a little porting, maybe a little more cam, shoot for 9:1 compression, stock exhaust. My question is...how far can I go before the computer doesn't know what's going on?

You might checkout the "88 318 refresh" thread at the bottom of this page. I'd wanna drop a 5.9 mag in there if it did not require computer mod changes.

Thanks for the redirect RapidRobert. It sounds like if I don't get silly, a little increased efficiency might help. I'll finish paying for Christmas and get right on this

5.9 is a bolt in and will run fine with the stock 5.2 confuser.

That engine is supposed to be 9 to 1 already, probably 8.5 in reality.

I built one where I square decked and zerodecked the stock pistons and ran a .039 fel pro head gasket for a while and with everything else bone stock it picked up significant MPG and TQ, got the MPG of a V6 with the power of a 5.9. I later switched to a .028 head gasket and my dad is driving it but he don't keep track of MPG good enough for me to know if that helped any more. But it runs awesome with no pinging on 87 octane and it is over 10 to 1. I would not hesitate to build one like it again. A little porting and a better flowing exhaust would probably help even more. If you plan to follow that build and want to upgrade the cam you will probably need notches in the pistons as P to V is very close with the stock cam. Do some porting in the throttle body and a CAI as well. Any serious mods are gonna need to do something with the beerbarrel intake, it heatsoaks real bad.

I would agree with hotroddave in that if you're looking for increased efficiency, upping the compression and tightening the piston to head clearance is where you want to focus on. I would probably leave the stock cam. I put together an electronic copy of the mp bowl porting templates for b/rb, la and magnum. If you want a copy pm me your email and I can send them.

Don't talk yourself out of a puter tune. A cam swap alone will dictate that. And with the tight quench, you'll get some timing back. Jus sayin...