Last Week
I introduced you to the Mopar Insiders long term Ram 1500, my 2016 Ram 1500 Sport crew cab 4×4. This week I will take you through the warranty issues and maintenance that the truck has required in the past 22 months.
Warranty
While my truck hasn’t been absolutely perfect, there have been a few warranty issues that have come up. All of these issues have been relatively minor and were easily and quicky dealt with by my local dealers service department.
- Around the 1000km mark, while sitting in the passenger seat while letting my brother drive my truck I noticed an air leak around the passenger front door area. The dealer replaced the weatherstrip and the issue has been gone since.
- Around the 5000km mark, the drivers front window came off the track on 2 separate occasions when trying to use it in cold temperatures, after the second time the dealer replaced the window regulator and the issue has not come back.
- The cruise control started working intermittently around 8000km, the dealer replaced the cruise contol buttons on the steering wheel and it hasn’t been an issue since.
One issue that I have had with the truck since new and still has not been resolved is a slight vibration at highway speeds as if you are driving on a square wheel. The truck has been in a few times for it and rebalancing the tires seems to move the speed around that it happens at. I did have a set of 22 inch SRT-10 wheels on the truck for awhile and the vibration went away. I have since put the stock 20s back on and replaced the Goodyear tires that came with the truck with load range e BFGoodrich KO2’s. The vibration is back and more pronounced with the load range e tires. I am planning to have the tires road force balanced and will report back if that solves the issue. If not I believe that one or more of the wheels was made out of round and will then be taking it up with the dealer.
Maintenance
With only 33k kms on the clock, maintenance so far has been pretty light. Even though FCA says that you can go 1 year or 16k kms between oil changes I don’t push mine nearly that far. At 5500kms I had the first oil change done by the selling dealer and switched to synthetic, total cost taxes in was $154.17. After that I decided to start doing the oil changes myself, at 12,500km I did another oil change using Pennzoil Platinum Synthetic 5w-20 and a Mobil 1 synthetic oil filter. At 20,000kms I did a combustion and fuel system cleaning using Seafoam engine cleaner. I also changed the oil again this time using Pennzoil Ultra Platinum Synthetic 5w-20 and used a larger Mobil 1 synthetic oil filter for a 2010 Hemi Ram. At this time I also rotated the tires and lubed all the caliper slide pins. When the 30,000km mark hit I again changed the oil with Pennzoil Ultra Platinum 5w-20 and used the larger Mobil 1 oil filter. I also sent an oil sample off to Blackstone Labs to see how the oil looked after a 10k km interval and to get an idea as to how my engine was wearing. Everything looks good and I will continue with a 10k km interval and again send a sample out when I hit the 60k km mark.
For those that didn’t know Ram switched to a smaller oil filter in 2013 for the 5.7 Hemi. After researching it I found that the larger filter from a 2009-2012 Ram will work on the later trucks with no issue. I have now been running the larger filters for the last 2 oil changes with no problems and I would definitely recommend it to anyone that wants to stretch their oil change intervals.
Stay tuned to Mopar Insiders for all the updates relating for our long term Ram 1500, next week we will go into modifications that have been performed on the vehicle. Check out our Forums section for more great content.
