Thanks buddy. Yeah we shaved: all the stake pockets, gas door, tail lights, skinned the tail gate and roll pan. running a 36" led strip for lights, that will be molded and epoxied in then painted over. you will never know its there until you hit the lights. Also we have a cool idea for the plate, but you will have to wait to see that. :thumbup
Yeah its a 1998, with the 2.5l. I had the same truck back when and did a Superchips tune, exhaust, intake, and that was about it, but it would pull away on the stock truck, so it did make a difference for sure. BUT itstill isnt a fast truck, a stock civic EX would pull away on me.
You can run a thicker head gasket to lower the compression a touch, and bolt on the turbo coupe or the Mustang LX 2.3T header and turbo stuff to it. But anything over 6psi or so would bend rods. Its still a heavy truck, around 3500+ I think it is. I might make a stainless header for it, to clean up the bay a little bit and get a little more out of it, we will see. at this point it will be stock motor, just alot of stuff shaved out and tucked. but that could change at some point. A carbed 5.0 would be a piece of cake to swap, and cheap too. who knows.