Drove an '06 Cummins with the 6 Speed transmission, today

[GHarman]

Died in the wool 1st gen driver here! Drove my Friends '06 over Berthoud Pass(http://www.scn.org/sbtp/swbk-defex.html )and over to Kremmling, Colorado, round trip.

The transmission shifted in a pattern that I was certainly not accustomed to, but I did manage to adapt to the quirks. There certainly was plenty of power and the fuel mileage was OUTSTANDING for a heavy duty truck. The rig had a short flat bed, crew cab, and overload springs.

The ride was far more smooth than the freight wagon 1st Gen concept:-laf!

Surprisingly low mileage on a 6 year old vehicle, but 64,000 hard use miles as a construction truck. There were clicks and clunks in the steering. Ball joints? Tie rod ends? Worn knuckle universal joints?

What do you all think of this model year? Any red flag areas?

Thanks in advance for your replys!

GregH

 

[sevobuck]

Clicks are more than likely U-joints. Clunks could be almost anything in the front end. I finally traced the clunk in my front end back to a coil spring that was slipping in the coil bucket.

 

[Wayne M.]

Greg, I went from a '92 that I got almost new in '97 till '04 when I got my present ride. I was completely blown away by the performance of the truck- in all areas. My main concern was that it was going to be as good a boy as the '92. It has proven itself. The only red flag I can think of is there seems to be a lot of A/C problems popping up here on the TDR. A coworker has an '06 megacab (not a member) and has just experienced what he thought was an icing evap, but wound up being black death. That's when the system explodes (usually the accumulator or dryer) and leaves black goo all throughout the system. He's spent lots of $$ and it's still not right.
I just rebuilt the front end of mine, and prior I thought I had bad sway bar links because I had a clunk going over certain bumps where the axle is articulated. It wound up being the ball joints- they were shot.

Heres my post when I took delivery... https://www.turbodieselregister.com/forums/showthread.php?109906-I-m-a-3G-owner-now!-%28long-post%29