Anyone ever swap in a V6 into their Abody?

4mulas said
I just don’t understand why you would. If you’re doing the swap anyway a V-8 is a must. It just makes no sense to swap a 6 for a 6. You won’t feel the extra 100 lbs on the front end vs the 6 cylinder. No offence intend to those who have or who are contemplating it.

Seems to me that most of those 3 litre ish 6 bangers don’t really get good economy either. With efi available nowadays and things like gear vendors or AOD trani’s you can get both exception mileage out of a v-8 and still have 400 horsepower with basically a camshaft and heads...

Another big reason for using a v8 swap is also residual value and recouping some of or all of your money when done. Put an340 in a car and now you’ve hit a Car! Put a 6 into a car and now you have a car competing with millions of other cars for sale...

My 2 cents....

I have a 5.2 in my 1993 dakota.Other than the sound it makes nothing about it is special.It moves the truck fine, but unless you manually shift the automatic its a dog, it gets 10 MPG in town and 14 mpg on the highway.The v6 in my 2wd 96 ram gets 16 MPG with me flogging the S$%t out of it, and before its automatic lost second gear it moved pretty good just in Drive.Granted the talk about automatics is a moot point because I have a manual transmission for my ram,and whatever engine goes in my scamp will be backed by a manual transmission.Automatic issues aside my dakota with the v8 has 33x11.5x15 mud tires with 3.55 gears while the ram with the v6 has 285/75/16 all terrains with 3.21 gears.By all accounts the dakota should destroy the ram in acceleration but it doesn't.As far as the weight savings goes, aluminum heads for the Magnum small blocks are $1000 plus change which doesnt seem worth it when the stock cast iron heads can be made to flow better and promote better combustion by keeping most of the heat in the chamber.I want handling and quick steering more than I want or need outright speed. All my life I have driven 4 cylinders, then moved up to sixes, the first v8 I've owned is in the dakota and its a bit lackluster all that power and grunt and it cant even tow with its 3.55 gears.

*EDIT* ok the v8 does accelerate much better than the V6 but only if you manually shift the automatic and turn off the overdrive.It sounds fantastic at 4000+ rpm but that doesnt help MPG.