I just had a western 7.5foot plow installed on my 2003 ram 1500 quad sport 5.7 hemi , and from the time i picked it up it has been overheating. I drove it on the highway for about 30 minutes at 55-60 mph with th e plow at different heights and angles and I had to pull over on 4 diffrent times tolet teh truck cool down. I also had to ride with the heater on full blast it was ridickulous. Should i install a lower temp thermostat like a 180 from jet performance? Any help and advice would be greatly appreciateed

 

A 1500 is not heavy enough to support the use of a plow. The front suspension is not robust enough to last under the usage of a plow. But aside from that, do you have the heavy duty cooling system? If the engine is overheating, guess what else is overheating? The transmission! You may need to add a transmission cooler and see if there is a larger capacity radiator available. You can give the thermostat a try and see if that resolves the problem.

 

The FSM specifically warns against the use of a plow on the 1500. It has to do with the frame.

It should not be overheating though. What kind of maintenance has been done?

 

Might be overheating simply because not enough cooling air is going through the grill considering there is a big *** plow in the way, even with the rad fan going.

 

Ha, ha. I thought the same exact thing. That is hard work for the whole driveline.

I also can't imagine someone plowing at the 55-60 mph (where the problem was occuring), so perhaps it was because of the speed of travel and not getting much air flow over the radiator. Simple problems, simple answers.

 

Up here in CT I've noticed some people driving around with them all the time, I can't imagine pushing that much air around unless I absolutely needed to.