Rats, alright. Thanks for the info.

 

Sorry to give the bad news. It will still work just need the Dakota gauges. Could use a Durango's I believe they are the same as ours

 

Yeah, not a big fan of the dakota/durango gauges even though they're similar.

Honestly, I'll probably stay with my original powerplant and trans, just tempting to think about a hemi swap sometimes...that is until you remember the cam/lifter failures that no-one has figured out yet. Hoping that doesn't happen to my 2014 Charger R/T.

 

The early Hemis didn't have that issue. That didn't come out until 2009. My Power Wagons have been fine so far. If it goes bad I'll go with aftermarket cam and lifters

Could swap a 4th gen interior and use those gauges

 

Haha well, I'd rather take my chances with the cam/lifters on the 09+ than with the dropped valve seats on the earlier ones!

Nah, if I was gonna go to that extent I'd just buy a 4th gen. They're getting cheap. I'd imagine here soon there are going to be more and more 4th gens in the used market for super cheap with cam/lifter failure that the owner can't justify the repair cost on. If you bought the truck for 8 grand and it's gonna be 5 grand to fix it...you just sell it as a truck with a bad engine. Guy like me buys it, puts an aftermarket cam and hellcat lifters in it.


Side note, I've got a buddy who's not mechanically inclined at all who's asking me what truck he should buy (something only a few years old). Honestly, I don't know what to tell him. The new GM's are utter trash in many many ways. The Hemis have the cam/lifter issue, and knowing my luck if I tell him to buy one he'd be one of the people who ended up with the failure. And don't get me started on Ford these days. That damned Ecoboost, what a joke, two turbos, direct injection PLUS port injection (and the dual management system to run both), dual overhead cam with independent variable valve timing...how much complexity can you build into a damn engine. When those go bad, I don't want to be anywhere near em....guess I'll tell him to buy a Toyota and try to find one with an extended warranty on the frame

 

Never heard of the dropped valve seats and I mostly worked on 3rd gen at the Dodge garage. I personally am going to do the 5th gen interior because I think the 2nd gens are the best looking Rams.

I still recommend Rams to people as I believe they are still the best trucks and cars

 

Dropped valve seats is quite common on the early 3rd gen hemis. Known issue for sure. Not sure about prevalence, hard to tell with the number on the road and variety of places servicing them.

I'll grant you that. 5th gens have stupendous interiors (the gauges are awesome looking now), but the truck itself...bleh. 4th gen's look ok, not great or aweful. Not a fan of 3rd gen styling. 2nd gens is where it's at for sure.

I'm in between. I buy Chrysler products for myself, but I'm not afraid of them because I can work on them and the Chrysler v8 stuff is still pretty simple (compared to the competition). In my personal experience, the Fords tend to be the most reliable, but when they go bad...it's a nightmare. Hard to repair, lots of special tools and ridiculous procedures, expensive OEM parts (if you can even get them). This may not be as true of the 5.0, need to look into that more, but I know the 5.4 3v engines had lots of issues with spark plugs and cam phasers/tensions that resulted in valves hitting pistons. Ecoboosts seem to be solid, but with the level of complexity there I just wouldn't take the risk with repair costs if I was in a position where I had to pay labor when things break.

Of all the vehicles I've owned, my Fords have been the most reliable and problem free, my GM's have been the worst, and my Chrylers have been mid-pack.

 

See I'm opposite I know a decent amount of people who own GM and Fords and they are down constantly. Hell I had a Ford come into my shop for engine work at only 7K miles and Ford told him to go pound sand. I owned many 3rd gens (still own 2) they are all high in miles. My Demon (new) is fine and gets dragged every weekend, I had one 4th gen sold it. My 5th gen is awesome. Plus all the old ones.

Now don't get me won't here I'm not blindly following FCA, they made huge mistakes. The new Dart was one. I just had the best luck with Chrysler. Hell my 4th gen drive me home on 2 cylinders. I did own one Ford and One Chevy truck as I got them pretty cheap. Never again. They had so many problems it was easier to list what worked. Chrysler does have a bad name. I had a guy call me a liar they my 96 has the factory tranny at 300,XXX miles. Then he said you must not work it hard, to which I replied you are an idiot

 

I think the thing with Chrysler that contributes so much to their bad reputation is that they changed so much over the different decades while other companies didn't as much. In the 1960s/70s nobody (I assume, I'm not old enough to have lived it) was talking about poor Chrysler reliability. Then came the later 70s and 80s and their financial problems, the ****ty K cars, the garbage heap front wheel drive vehicles they made in the 90s, etc that earned them a bad rep. Then things changed a couple more times and their quality is considerably better now. I crack up hearing people say "Chrysler transmissions are junk" and then when I point out that the 5 speed in my Charger is a Mercedes unit that's known to be bulletproof, and the 8 speeds are ZF units that are the best in the industry, they just talk about the transmission failures their uncle had on his 1995 Sebring and assume it still applies. Non car people don't think like we do, they think is large generalizations about "brands", not components and engineering.

For instance, I know that the Ford I happened to own (Grand Marquis) was a panther platform that had the venerable 4.6 engine that was a million mile engine in taxi cabs. Doesn't mean that the 5.4 3v they were producing at the exact same time was a good engine, because it was the worst engine you could get in any truck at the time. I try to be more model specific when discussing these things rather than brand specific.

I would personally feel 100% comfortable buying a newer Ram for myself, I just hate to make a recommendation when the cam/lifter failure is a known issue and knowing it would cost him thousands and thousands of dollars if it happened to him. I wouldn't recommend a modern GM product because they have the same cam/lifter issue PLUS all sorts of other nonsense and their build quality is laughably bad. Wouldn't recommend an ecoboost because of complexity. Might recommend the F150 with a 5.0 in it, gotta look into it more. The Toyota is probably a safe bet.

 

Toyota is good if you don't want a "real" truck or a fancy interior. Lol up uncle Tony's video on the cam/lifter failures and he makes a good point.