Home Forums Gear Hunting Trucks and Four-Wheel Drives Upgrade questions

I have a 01 gmc with the 6.0 and would like a little more power from it. I have been thinking of upgrading the exhaust to a 3" pipe to let it breath better. I was also looking into swapping the mechanical fan out to an electric unit. Any thoughts one which one will give me the best bang for the buck?

The fan most likely, but you probably won't notice a difference with either of them.

To get enough additional power to really notice it, you need to go to a more aggressive cam, forced induction or a higher performance engine. Upgrading exhaust and intakes is a way to spend a bunch of money and not make a significant difference in performance.

Car makers are trying to squeeze every bit of power out of them and still meet EPA standards. If a larger exhaust helped much, I'm sure they'd use it.

Have you thought about chipping it? From the 80's and older, a lot of vehicles benefited from opening up the exhaust, but newer stuff flows pretty well from the factory. Most mechanical fans have an electric clutch on them, so they freewheel when not needed and don't waste much power anyway.

A cat back exhaust will give you some. About enough to feel it, but not a whole bunch. It really isn't a lot of bang for the buck.

With an '01 if the cat hasn't been changed, check it. After about 100k miles when they're starting to fill up you'll have been losing power very gradually. A new converter can really wake up the engine.

As for the exhaust if you like the sound, go for it. If you are trying to gain mileage or power, save your money

Thanks guys