Rekindling That Fire: 13 Year Old Cummins Gets Sinister Diesel Boost

Every diesel truck owner is very different. They have their dislikes and their likes, but we wanted to focus on rejuvenating a truck that has collected dust over the years. With the help of Sinister Diesel, we’re taking this 13-year old Dodge truck, a 2006 model 2500, and removing some of the restricting intake parts and replacing them with improved better flowing parts. Additionally, to free the exhaust better, we’re also going to upsize the exhaust to improve this engines flow.

Although everyone has their own spin on their parts, I think we can agree that no matter what, anything is better than the clogged up factory unit. There are many choices on performance intakes on these trucks, so it is important to know how it works and why. Sinister Diesel strives to create the best of the parts on the market.

Sinister Diesel intakes are designed, engineered and fabricated in-house to provide industry-leading performance and durability. All of their intakes utilize CNC mandrel bent aluminum tubing for maximum strength. Their kits include silicone couplers that are much more reliable than the OEM, heavy-duty hardware that you can count on when it matters most. Also, like most of their parts, they put their own spice on it with their unique Sinister Blue powder coating that is eye-catching and lasts for years.

Sinister Diesel’s cold air intakes for all models come in multiple colors including silver and their trademark blue powder coat.

Features:

Precision CNC Mandrel Bent Aluminum Tubing for a Perfect Fit
Oversized Long Lasting Reusable Cotton Oiled Filter Media
Significantly Improved Throttle Response and Turbo Spool-up
Great for Daily Driving, Towing or Race Day
Perfect When Paired With a Sinister Diesel Exhaust or Tuner
Polished and Powder Coated in our Signature Sinister Blue
Easy, Drop-In Installation with Basic Hand Tools and Minimum Experience

These filters are much freer flowing and will feed your engine the air it needs to perform at maximum potential.

Includes:

CNC Mandrel Bent Aluminum Intake Tube
Reusable Oiled Cotton Media Filter
Installation Hardware

With any additional intake air, there needs to be a balance. So how to balance that out you ask? How about a full 5-inch exhaust upgrade? With this new 5-inch exhaust from Sinister, we will maximize our current horsepower and torque to the wheels. Each exhaust kit is precision cut and bent out of 409 stainless steel for high corrosion resistance and easily bolts together using the included hardware and gaskets.

This full 5-inch 5.9-liter Cummins diesel exhaust kit comes with all the components you need to install this for any cab or bed size configuration and it also includes an 18-inch muffler and six-inch rolled exhaust tip.

Features:

5″ Diameter for reduced restriction and improved exhaust flow
Improved Horsepower and Torque
409 Stainless Steel Construction
Quicker Turbo Spool-up
Lower Exhaust Gas Temperatures
Improved Exhaust Note
Includes both 18″ Muffler and 18″ Straight Pipe
Polished Sinister Diesel Exhaust tip

Includes:

(1) Full Turbo-Back Exhaust System
(1) 18-inch Muffler
(1) 18-inch Straight Pipe
Installation Hardware and Gaskets
Polished Stainless Steel Exhaust Tip

With this 5-inch exhaust, your Cummins engine will certainly make some noise in the neighborhood. Also, for your hearing pleasure, with this new intake, you'll hear that turbocharger scream louder than ever.

At a glance, the quality of these parts is incredibly nice. The finish on the powder, the bends of the exhaust, and even the quality of the mounting hardware were incredibly nice. The owner of the truck, an everyday truck driver that works a normal job needs a truck that he can count on. On the weekends, this trucks sole purpose is to pull a very large camper. Although the truck did complete the job, the mileage wasn’t great, the sound wasn’t exciting, and he wanted more.

Cold Air Intake

Knowing the first thing to get the exhaust loose was to loosen the downpipe, we started under the hood. After removing the downpipe clamp, we left the exhaust alone until we were ready to lift the truck up in the air. Until then, it was time to get the extremely restrictive factory intake off the truck. The factory box had almost no inlets for air and for the ones that existed, they weren’t exactly high-performance.

With the factory box bolts removed, we then loosened the rubber booth connecting the air intake hose to the turbocharger. With that completely loose now, the factory system was removed from the engine bay of the truck. Now, all that is exposed is a bare engine bay and turbocharger waiting for a Sinister blue cold air intake.

As you can see, there is no comparison to the new Sinister intake versus the factory.

Once we started to remove the clamps, yes, the rusty thirteen-year-old ones, we were thankful that our friends over at Sinister hooked us up with some heavy-duty ones. It wouldn’t have been pretty attempting to reuse the original ones. One clamp at a time and even breaking out the trusty Sawzall, the factory exhaust was out.

We got the exhaust system laid out on the floor so we could envision its layout prior to holding it up there and mocking it up. With the pieces laid out using the correct length pieces, we were ready to start slipping it all together. Firstly, the downpipe was fastened tight enough it wouldn’t fall off, but loose enough there was enough wiggle room. If you’ve done a downpipe before, you know how little room there is to reclamp it to the turbochargers exhaust housing.

Luckily for us, we had an alignment rack at our disposal. This made the installation process a lot easier for us to do versus doing it on the ground. While you can easily do it on the ground, if you have a lift, it makes life much easier. Doing these installs, it only required a few basic hand tools to remove and install.

After the downpipe, it was simply adding two 5-inch length pieces and a Sinister Diesel 18-inch muffler in between the two. After the length of the exhaust is installed, all that remains is the “over the axle” piece of pipe that ends up behind the passenger rear tire. With everything mocked the way we wanted, we went ahead and torqued all of the clamps down followed by the chrome 6-inch tip installed.

Well, we frantically lowered the truck down to the ground and fired it up. The went from a very muffled and quiet noise to a very throaty, deep Cummins growl. The newfound sound coming from this 5.9-liter engine screams up the road and sounds great in passing just after hearing that turbo scream out of this badass new air intake.

There are multiple options for exhaust tips that Sinister offers, but we decided to go with the traditional chrome tip.

For more information about Sinister Diesel and all of the products that they offer, be sure and check out their website. Stay tuned to Diesel Army as we try out more great products from Sinister Diesel in the near future.