Ram 4500/5500

Arcamper wrote:
I know our local fire and rescue trucks have all gone from Ford to Ram. They must know something...

Our new Rams, 14s and 15's 2500 to 5500 models have had some issues in the arctic conditions up here on the job, but no where near the severity of issues with the Dmaxes and Pstrokes.
We have worst possible conditions, 0 to -40 deg F. Some idle 24/7. No load driving conditions, max speed 35mph and the longest road is about 3 miles before you need to stop or turn around. Certain death for newer diesels.
The problems we've experienced that differ form the other 2 brands out of a fleet of 15+ new Rams are, 3 bad DEF injectors (think the def is freezing and cracking the injector bodies, line heater doesn't take care of it, 1 bad ammonia sensor, and on the 5500's only, the transfer case rear output seal gets loose and works it's way partially out of the case bore, causing a leak at the tail shaft. This last problem only happens at below -35F and we just loc tited the seals in. 1 water pump on a new truck, weird anomaly.
NONE of the RAMS have had to go through a manual re-gen due to dpf plugging, but some have had to be driven to re gen.

On the FOrd 6.7s, no hard parts issues with the emissions systems, but they will plug and need a manual regen at least monthly if run continuous. The def tanks will crack when they freeze up when the trucks are shut off if they are over 3/4 full (can fill the Rams and GMs to full without them popping when they freeze up). The Pstrokes all get CAT silicone O rings in the hydroboost pressure lines and they still leak regularly, but without the O ring replacement, they will dump all the power steering juice at about -30.

Duramax trucks are a little better, but they have similar issues with leaks on the radiator hose plastics connections as well as trans cooler lines leaking. The Dmax trucks will also plug up about the same as the Strokers and need a manual re-gen.

Perhaps the dumbest thing is that a vehicle owner can't manually re-gen their truck without proprietary software, but I guess it keeps the mfgs from having customers burning stuff down.

The Rams also ingest the least amount of snow into the air filter.
In a recent convoy through a 50-70mph wind/blizzard/whiteout, ALL trucks were suffering from snow injestion. Air filters were all blocks of ice the next day. ALL the trucks threw the air filter minders up on the DIC screens. The Cummins Rams were the only brand that didn't have any complete shut downs or reduced power due to lack of air.

In short, we do our best to kill trucks up here and the new Rams seem to die last!