Hello All,
First of all, I am new here and I love this site. It is so awesome to see all of these X's! I first found it while trying to figure out why my auto 4X4 wouldn't engage, and was so excited when I followed the advice on checking for vacuum leaks, and was able to tell my Hubbie what was wrong with it! Now it just needs to be fixed.
Ok, so I am just a dumb blonde that wants my '00 PSD X to look good, sound good and haul a$$. I have looked all through the forum about things to do, but there are so many different places and different subjects that I kind of got overwhelmed. I would just like to try to get a general opinion about some simple, cost efficient things for lifting it a little and giving it a power boost. I say simple cause my husband is a very busy guy , so it would be me helping with it, and I am still learning all about this whole diesel stuff. His idea of sounding good was to cut out the muffler and stick a steel pipe in place of it. Would that be considered redneck?
Thanks and great to "meet" all of you!
Shannon

 

Gonna try this again; 1st reply didn't post.......

Shannon:

Welcome to FTE. Good to see you on the site and asking questions.

Please check out the 1999-2003 7.3 diesel forum here. It has a LOT of info to help you get where you want to go, and a helluva lot of good folks that will help you with ANYTHING!!!

Check my signature, you can see the mods I have on my 01 Ex.

And, the "Muffler Delete" your husband did is NOT redneck, just another perfomance mod.....

I live between this and the diesel forum, and I am really happy with the site. Use some of the money these folks will save you, and become a supporter!!

Don

 

Your going to find your question is somewhat loaded with personal preference. I sold these parts for 6 years and have been invited to several vendor shows, there is a lot out there with an equal mount of opinion to them.

I dislike muffler deletes on street vehicles, it makes them too loud to drive in neighbor hoods in the middle of the night without drawing attention. There are many muffler manufactures and kits available. Again there is personal preference, I dislike the sound of flowmaster and prefer Gibson, Corsa and Dynomax. I believe they attenuate the higher frequencies better and produce a lower toned exhaust. Running without something to attenuate the exhaust frequencies means you will hear more high frequency sounds.

For the lift, There are plenty of options. I rather like the box kits such as fabtech's hangers. You don't need to replace the track arm with and can use stock sized shocks. Fabtech is good for about 2-2.5" of lift on the front.

The engine is an air pump, get more air in and more out, then add more fuel. So Intake, Exhaust and tune are the places to start. Find a CAI you like, you already have some exhaust mods done, then buy a tuner. Tuners have a very hot following, There are canned tunes, semi canned (made by third party tuners using a companies software) and custom (dyno) tunes. Custom tunes can only be done if the tuner has access to your vehicle and can run it with several different tunes to find the one that works best. There are options that mix custom with semi-custom, such Sniper's Delta Forces and SCT has one as well. You get a computer program and a downloader, you write a dozen tunes and try them out.