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I feel your pain, I have a 2002 Ram with the 4.7/5spd. I'll second Big Dave on the tonneau as without crunching the numbers I'll say mine was worth more than 1mpg, probably would have a larger effect on a long bed (mine's the 6'-3 bed).
I think with your grille blocks you need to be most careful about your transmission fluid temperature. The auto Rams particularly the 2nd gens were very sensitive about ATF fluid temperature.
You're not starting out at a bad spot with your truck as the 2nd gens had about a .43 Cd whereas my 3rd gen has a .52 and a good bit larger cross-sectional area as well.
You also need to pay attention to your engine tune. I think the 98s were among the trucks that the 360 had the split upper/lower intake manifold with the "belly pan gasket" that was an absolute POS. It would constantly break seal and the intake would suck oil into the rear of the manifold and carbon up cylinders 7/8 and their valves causing a ton of pinging. I had heard where people used SeaFoam in the manifold and hailed it as the miracle ping cure and their ping came back before they ran out their gas tank of 87 and needed 89+ again. Most folks never cured it until they replaced the intake with a Mopar M1 (which is available in a dual-plane and should be good for towing).
I had heard that the stock exhaust manifolds from the 94/95 Magnum engines were better flowing than the later-model manifolds. If you're not going to look for tuned long-tube or tri-y headers you could pick a pair of older junkyard manifolds and maybe help a little.
There's some Dodge Truck forums out there but lately they haven't been very active. You could search some archives and see if there's any tips there. I know if you go to dodgetrucks.org and search for aerodynamics or fuel efficiency you'll get some mega-threads with a wealth of information. There's also the Dodge Ram truck (DiRT) mailing list that I'm on and there's a member there (at DTO also) who incessantly does before/after FE comparison tests and aero tweaks. I want to say he has a truck very similar to yours. You should check that out and scan archives to see what's already been posted.
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