Truck Plan Update

[magnethead]

Well Here's an update: We've narrowed our selection down to a dodge ram 1500 or a van..no joke. We couldn't even find a ext. cab with 75+" of bed length. We test drove a Ram 1500 Lone Star edition with a HEMI :drool: and it's the most likely to be bought...considering it's the only crew cab we could find with a big enough bed (dodge doesn't make extended cab's anymore- they replaced that half door with a normal door thats the same width).

There's one thing- the ram was 14/18 on the fuel sticker, the chevy HD's (the other option- crew cab 8' bed, but much more $$) were 9/12 on the sticker. My dad figures he could just use our dually since it's actually got a decent turning radius- he just doesn't know if he could fit it into the parking slots without taking up 2 slots.

We assume we can easily get our dually to that 9/12 mark for much less than that 30K+ price tag of the HD and still have a full size cab and 8.2' bed. Does this make sense and look like it could add a hefty bit of fuel mileage?

New intake
New Carb
New Radiator (currently leaks)
electric fans
cold air intake

add to that a fixing of the heat/AC system. After we made some decent money, maybe a gear vendor OD unit would be next for $2500.

What would make that ol' wore out 454 reliable? (definition of reliable: able to withstand 900+ miles a week, week after week after week)