I've neglected little problems on my truck for a long time but the heater core finally went, which kicked off a slew of repairs:
evaporator core and all new A/C components,dash top replacement, parking brake cables (broken), timing cover (gasket was leaking) and chain, power steering hoses and cooler (leaking/rotted), new spark plugs, new cap/rotor, and intake manifold re-gasket.

My question is, if you folks are replacing your power steering coolers, which one are you using? I can't seem to find one that looks like the one my truck came with. Most pictures of aftermarket coolers suck, and i cannot find any with a bracket like the factory cooler. Do i have to come up with a different mounting solution? Curious what the group here has come up with.



I did hughes plenum fix several years ago. Probably 4 years and maybe 30-40k miles ago. I've been getting similar symptoms to a blown plenum gasket for a long time. Pinging at higher RPM, eating a quart of oil every 3k miles, and sure enough the kegger had plenty of oil inside. Spark plugs had some oil on them, the passenger side much more so than the drivers side. I thought i had screwed something up, but when I pulled the kegger every gasket came off in once piece and showed no signs of leaks, especially the plenum. In fact the plenum gasket looked so good it looked like it could be re-used. there was a clear oil stain on the inside of the kegger where the pcv valve is plumbed in. I'm sure I replaced this valve when I did Hughes fix, but not sure if I used a mopar pcv. Has anyone had the experience of a pcv valve causing this much oil to burn? I bought a mopar valve from amazon to replace it.

 

 

A stuck PCV can certainly cause higher than normal oil consumption. Remove the PCV valve and shake it. If you can hear it rattle, it should be working. You can clean it by spraying carb cleaner through it to free up any gummy oil inside the valve. Also, ensure that its a Mopar PCV valve, as some of the aftermarket PCV valves don't control the oil as well as they should.

 

The old valve definitely still rattles. I should have mentioned that.

 

If it isn't a mopar PCV, replace it. The aftermarket fellers aren't always the correct flow rate.

 

You could put an oil catch can on it. I installed a cheapo catch can from Amazon on my truck a couple of years ago. These days my intake is dry, and I have no more pinging. At each oil change I dump probably around 2 ounces of oil out of the catch can and that's 2 ounces that would have otherwise ended up in the intake. Seems like common sense to me. I even put a catch can on my Harley, since they have the same issue. Eventually I plan to have one on all of my vehicles.

 

Neither of my two rams have them, I believe they where only on the HD models. If there is nothing wrong with the stock one continue to use it.

 

Think it was part of the towing package as well.

 

I’ll confirm that it was part of the towing package… I have one on mine.
Its not much of a cooler… maybe 18” of tube in a U shape with fins.
Derale have some decent made coolers… search Amazon.

 

One of mine has the towing package and it doesn't have it. It's possible it came along after 96.