'16 Ram 2500 CTD first tow. Some thing is wrond

I tow at 24.5K GCW with the 3:42 gears in 5th gear and it down shifts to 4th to climb normal mountain passes. It will go to 3th on a windy slower steep pull.

goducks10 wrote:

tinner12002 wrote:
Mine rarely downshifts from 6th unless I'm pulling a pretty steep incline with the cruise engaged. It may drop a couple MPH on a hill but cruise and 6th stay engaged. Only pulling about 12K 5th wheel toy hauler @65mph so its not working hard at all.

Big difference between 4.10s and 3.42's.

Agreed. My 4.30's allow me tow in sixth gear and it will shift down to fifth on inclines. The steepest grades will usually pull in fourth unless a lower speed limit warrants a lower gear. This is on a detuned chassis cab typically over 14K lbs GVW and 22K lbs GCW but it will be over 16K lbs GVW and 24K lbs GCW starting this spring and I don't expect much difference.

Thanks to all.

Start engine, turn on TH and FULL EB every time. Lighter RV tow in 6th on flat land, any hills lock in 5th at 60 you will be at 1,750RPM a perfect pulling RPM. If you see a larger hill coming up drop to 4th before it slows and you loose speed. The computers are good but they can't see ahead of you.

I used cruise on all four of my Cummins Rams. My '98 12v was a 5spd/4.10 so it ran 24-2500rpm all day every day at 68=70mph towing or not. No downshift needed or possible. It was a noisy beast. The '01.5 and '03 were just a matter of momentarily stepping on the loud peddle to cause a downshift at the bottom of the hills so it was already in it's power band. Same with my '05 Hemi powered Ram and even my lowly 5.4L F250. If I were deaf and didn't have a tach, I wouldn't know the difference. Cringe is not an engine weakness or transmission problem. :B

tinner12002 wrote:
Mine rarely downshifts from 6th unless I'm pulling a pretty steep incline with the cruise engaged. It may drop a couple MPH on a hill but cruise and 6th stay engaged. Only pulling about 12K 5th wheel toy hauler @65mph so its not working hard at all.

Big difference between 4.10s and 3.42's.

Mine rarely downshifts from 6th unless I'm pulling a pretty steep incline with the cruise engaged. It may drop a couple MPH on a hill but cruise and 6th stay engaged. Only pulling about 12K 5th wheel toy hauler @65mph so its not working hard at all.

I had a similar reaction to the OP when first driving our new RAM CTD.

When in cruise, the down-shift to 5th is loud and busy, as cruise waits for the mph to drop ~4 mph, it then races to catch up and revs the engine upto ~2500 rpm, before settling down to a comfortable 1800 rpm in 5th. This prolly what I least like about our RAM CTD with the 68RFE.

But there are a couple of options to avoid this:

The simplest is to stay in cruise and lock out 6th as soon as you hit the hills. This is what I and most others do.

Or you can manually downshift to 5th. The transition is much smoother with no high-rpm flare if you downshift at the base of a hill before the mph drops. But it's too much trouble for me, especially on long trips in the hills.

My 2013 F250 works similar losing about 3-4mph but it had the 3.31 rear gears, from what I read it's less of an issue with the 3.55's. It's not a preoblem with your truck, it's more of a situation where you are running at a slightly less than optimal RPM for the power curve. I've driven plenty of vehicles over the years and it seems with lower gears of today it's more of an issue on cruise. The worst offender I found was the previous generation Suburbans with the 5.3 and I believe 3.08 rear gears ( I could be wrong on the ratio) they were a dog on cruise and would drop nearly 8-10mph in the hills. We always end up with one as a rental on our family winter vacation it seems, 6 years and counting!

In my case when I run about 60-62 on cruise I lose about 3-4mph, if I run about 65-68 I lose 1-2, at slower speeds I simply would put my foot down to cause it to downshift right before the hill.

blofgren wrote:
As others have said it sounds like you need to lock out 6th to keep your RPM's somewhere around 1900-2100. That is the sweet spot for the Cummins and it will pull like a train.

My combo is great in that I sit right in that range in 6th gear right around 65 mph so I can actually pull my 16k fiver up some pretty good grades without downshifting and it will actually accelerate up the hill if I give it some more throttle. Trust me, your new truck has MUCH more pulling power than your old 7.3L, it will just take getting to know it better to get it out of it.

Please let us know how you make out!

Uh....that depends a lot on what he had done to the 7.3

My last modified 7.3 would put any brands new stock truck to shame for pure pulling power...brakes, comfort, stability....that's a whole nother story!