new hemi old ram

[89hemid100]

so im planning on a conversion over the winter in my 87 truck. what i have is basically an open slate. i was planning to do a 360 mag swap and run a programmer with it but seeing as a 5.7 hemi has some better starting numbers i may go this route. i do have some sources to talk to that are swapping these engines into older cars, but they just went out and bought the first hemi they could find. i have the time to do some research and pick what i want. which leaves me a bunch of questions that im continuing to search for answers to.

so the truck is a 87 and currently has an older 318 in it, ive converted it to appear like a 78. it has an early stepside attached to it. im going to build a dana 60 for it, still need to pick out gears for it. im going to have a 727 build with a trans brake and manual valve body. which im told the hemis use the same bellhousing as the smallblocks. im planning on treating it like its a manual and keep the engine separate from the engine computer. the truck will end up with a full cage in the next couple years. i plan on keeping it street legal though. im going to bracket race it on the weekends and drive it to some cruise ins during the week. short term i plan on sticking a 5.7 in with a tuner. long term i plan on putting a turbo to it after doing some internal changes.

so as far as questions go:

what year engine is the best to start with? ive been told that the pcms from some of the early years work better with programmers then others.

which programmer gives the best adjustment? i will be doing some more research on this. i dont want one i have to hook a laptop up to adjust. i was looking at the diablo sport t1000. it appears to be sorta what im looking for. im also curious to how they adjust and how easy it is to use. ive seen them used on diesels and they seemed really basic. racing it id think itd be handy to be able to fine tune on it.

any help is greatly appreciated. itd be real easy to throw a big block in it and pound away but i like this idea a little bit better. its different.

 

[ST-8]

There's a guy on here that did a hemi swap on a 2G ram, tho it's not the same swap it will probably help you in the right direction. He made a nice thread I'll try to find it. Also I remember seeing a guy posting pics of a hemi swap in his ram charger. I believe there threads may be on dodgetalk

 

[ramanator]

I'm wanting to do this with my 84

 

[89hemid100]

There's a guy on here that did a hemi swap on a 2G ram, tho it's not the same swap it will probably help you in the right direction. He made a nice thread I'll try to find it. Also I remember seeing a guy posting pics of a hemi swap in his ram charger. I believe there threads may be on dodgetalk

any points in the right direction would work. ive been reading stuff through various google results. lots of information. and seems like there are alot of variances in the hemi blocks in the same year but over different platforms. still trying to slim it down to which year and model engine i need to find for a donor.