Love/hate new truck

[Ram4Sam]

I'm sure the six months starts the day you drive it off the lot, oil doesn't go bad or get full of bad stuff while sitting on the lot.

Sam

 

[2rrRAM2nv]

I'll be changing my own oil and I doubt that I'll hit even 4k in 6 months. I don't tow (currently - no 5th wheel) and mainly commute 15 miles 1-way. I used to change oil in my older vehicles annually and never had issues. heck, even at 8k miles, oil still looked pretty good. oh well, guess I'll be feeding the recycle oil bin at Oreillys with lots of good oil. sigh.

 

[Dutch & Di]

I'm sorry for the delay in posting my updates but between taking care of business, working rallies, traveling and medical issues, I just haven't had time until today.

May Pahrump, NV.
After the May Madness rally was over and we got a bit caught up, we took the truck to Saitta Dodge and asked them if any flashes were available for our truck. They took several hours and updated what they found. Two days later, we were still having trouble with our Nav and went back. They told us they felt it was the radio. It would have to be replaced but it would take 2 weeks to get the new radio. Then they would have to remove the whole dash. We decided to put that on hold for now as removing the dash was not something we want to do to a new truck.

June La Grande NV
Took the truck in with the recall notice I had received in mail which included a TPMS recall regarding: Have "TPMS serviced lite comes on". {We have had this message come on twice since they replaced all six sensors back in CA. It comes on and several hours later, goes away by itself, so far. The service manage said we had had a flash in NV and I agreed but said we still had issues. He told me he had a different flash. Several hours later, we were finished & he showed me 8 pages of potential issues in this particular recall. Let's hope this fixes everything. He did tell me that if the NAV still isn't working right that the radio indeed would need to be replaced but the whole dash does not need to be taken apart. Let's hope we don't have to test this theory.

July -Utah
I called ahead to a Dodge dealer asking for help on our Curt Hitch. We have been having so many problems getting it to lock into place. As 18 year fulltime RV'ers, we have been used to just backing in, hearing it our Reese hitch click and we were done. Now it sometimes it takes us up to half an hour with the Curt hitch. I got a great service rep on the phone and he said, it definitely wasn't normal and that he felt we had bad locking jaws. He called Curt who agreed and they are sending a new head to them. I told them I could not make a definite appt time as we didn't know how long we would be at the orthopedic surgeons office. This was absolutely unexpected & wonderful as he said: "just come over when you are finished and we'll take care of you".We arrived and they replaced the hitch head. I jokingly said: "If you hear a primal scream in 2 days when we go to hook up-----& he said "I'm running for the hills". We both laughed and headed out the door. We hooked up and it snapped right in! {& is still working as it should}. About 2 weeks later, Curt Hitch called to follow up and we thanked him for that and said it is working correctly and we are happy with his and Dodge's service.

July-Colorado.
Dutch saw very hard wear on the outside of the front passenger tire. We stopped at the next dealer we came to and told the service department we were traveling and was there anyway in the next 4 days they could----and before Dutch could go any further the service guy said "we are booked up for 2 solid weeks". We have people staying in motels, RV's, etc to get into his busy shop. {The bays were empty, no one was at the counter & no one but 1 guy was in the waiting room lobby}. We started to leave and we decided to go back and ask him to write down {so we had something to show Dodge}that they could not take us in just in case we had more wear and/or a further problem while looking for another dealer in a different town. He wrote down "customer needs immediate attention" so we just walked out. We called our case manager and were told to take it to any alignment shop to have it checked which we did. When he finished, we wanted to have those front tires swapped. They didn't do that type of work but told us where to go. While they were doing that, I asked Paul about rotation in general. He told me, we couldn't just rotate the tires as the 2 front & 2 outer duals had aluminum wheels but the 2 inner duals were steel. The only way to properly rotate them would be to remove all the wheels, break them down, put them on different wheels and put them back on. That sounds not only time consuming but expensive and in my opinion, very wrong of Dodge to give us steel wheels so that we could not easily rotate our tires, either ourselves or by a company. According to the brochure we had in our hand at Dodge when we ordered our truck in October, It said "3500 Dual Rear Wheels. 17' x 6" polished aluminum. It didn't say anything about 4 polished wheels & 3 steel wheels -2 inner duals & 1 spare. Of course, our dealer didn't mention this either. Unfortunately& I'm sure it won't happen but I feel Dodge owes 3 polished aluminum wheels. When he swapped the wheels, I asked him why he wasn't breaking them down because of the TPMS. Paul said he called Dodge and they said that it wasn't necessary that he just had to adjust the pressures in the 2 front tires and they would pick up the correct sensors on their own. By the way, because we had purchased tires in the past from this company, were was no charge to swap these tires. When I get a chance I am going to call the Dodge number he gave me and verify this. It still won't help us on rotating the inner duals but apparently we have to take baby steps to get answers. We hooked up the next day and headed down the road. Unfortunately, the alignment wasn't right and it was still pulling to the left.

August-Kansas.
We spoke to our case manager and she said to take it to another Dodge dealer and they would take care of us. The dealer did a great job and they took it for an 18 miles test before releasing it back to us. We left that area with the truck and both unhooked and hooked up she was riding down the road straight!
So to try to and end this on an upbeat note, the hitch is working, we are driving down the road straight and so far no ware on the outer side of passenger tire. We are still investigating the rotation situation and still have to finalize the Nav problems {we need to be somewhere for 3 weeks to get a new radio if problems persist} The down side is that we have had our truck for 10 months and no way should we have:
1. Had all of these issues
2. Spent so much time in dealerships to fix problems. Some very good experiences and unfortunately more bad experiences. Hugs, Di

 

[Cummins12V98]

Di,

I had the same wear problem with our 11 RAM Dually. The specs are for too much toe in. They want it to track straight from the factory. I deal with a guy that all he does is frame and suspension and he aligned mine 1/32" to 1/16" and that took care of the problem. I would not worry about rotating your tires won't last all that long if they are like my OE's General POS. They were 2/3 worn at 25K and had a big tread separation. So New Michelin MS2's went on at that time. Now 25K later they look MUCH better than the POS tires did at the same mileage.

I am just rotating side to side on the fronts and leaving the rears alone.