At 12:47 AM 7/22/99 -0400, you wrote:
>I was just wondering what you guys thought would be the most cost
>effective mod to bring my 99 Dak's 1/4 mile times down. Right now she is
>doing 16 roughly and completely stock. Will HEADERS make a huge diff in
>cabin noise? That's what i am leaning towards and was worried about that
>and the cost of ceramic coating. Do you have to get them coated, meaning
>is the heat without the coating bad for the plastic and what not in the
>engine bay? Will T. 99 Dakota CC 318, Auto 3.55
Will
The best et that I got in my first three 1/4 runs was 16.7 ... that was
with a cat-back, a dropin K&N, all-season street tires and about 200-250
extra lbs. in appearance bolt-ons. On the next three runs, I put in the
'96 MP SBEC and dropped to 15.9 sec. No other performance mods has given
me such a performance improvement to date. IMHO, it's the most cost effective
improvement that can be done.
There is one drawback with using the '96 MP SBEC. Your instrument gauges
(water, oil, voltmeter, speedometer, tach., etc.) will not function.
It also requires the use of 92 octane. I drive using an aftermarket tach.
and, at regular intervals, put the OE PCM back in to check that everything
is functioning correctly. I am now comfortable driving (5 months) with this
setup.
The addition of headers (Mike Leach's, in my case) gave an improvement of
1.5-2.0 sec. A little low end torque was lost as the headers moved
the power band up about 500 rpm. I had the headers ceramic coated but
I believe that the Leach headers are nickel-plated (which should be good
enough for rust and stain protection). They give off a lot of heat but
do not damage anything in the engine bay. The plus side is that they
cool off very quickly. Personal opinion = not a huge difference in cabin
noise.
Good luck.
Bob
Burlington, Ontario
'97 CC Sport, 5.2L, 3.55, auto., 4x2, flame red
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:15:05 EDT