Going on a 3 years of ownership and I cannot believe what happened to me yesterday 3/20/2012. On my way to a doctors appointment I hear grinding noise in rear of the truck. I being to speed up to pass another vehicle to move into a right lane to pull into a church parking lot. Before I can make the turn into the church parking lot SNAP! Crackle! POP!

My rear wheels lock up; my truck begins to spin out of control and parts from my drive shaft drop to the pavement. I got control of the truck after doing a 360 tailspin and avoiding traffic going my direction and away from my direction. This literally scared the HELL out of me! The truck was towed to the dealer and I am awaiting feedback on how did this happen.

About 4 months ago my PCM module was fried and cause my transmission to lock up. This the second time I have had an issue with my powertrain and right now I do not have any confidence on RAM trucks.

 

It's just got so much power they're having trouble designing a drive shaft or pinion that will hold up!!

 

If your rear wheels locked up (and were still locked up after the shaft fell off) the drive shaft is likely not the issue, the differential locked up, the drive shaft just twisted off.

That leads to the question, have you performed any differential maintenace? How many miles?

Glad in the end it was not worse that it was.

 

Yes I have CarGuyOhio. I had differential maintenance at 10000 and 20000 miles

 

Also, I have 39471 miles on it now.

 

I agree with carguyohio. If you ever been to a truck pull and see a drive shaft snap, the truck will still move. It does sound like a differential problem. I would talk to your maintenace guy and see what exactly he did and what caused the problem. If you don't have the lifetime powertrain warranty, then I would chew some *** and make them pay for everything.

 

I`ll bet my money on the rear differential, it likely blew out the pinion bearing. The diff`s in these trucks just flat out suck...PERIOD
Both my 2010 hemi rams have issues with growl & whining. The dealer`s tell me to just keep driving it until it blows. WHAT..?!?!?!
Yeah, thats nice, inconveinience the customer and not just FIX THE DAM THING, and put the customer in harms way when it blows.
I`m with the OP here, my confidence in dodge/chrysler anymore has become VERY low. Quality..? What quality...!
Dodge/Chrysler better pray i dont get into a bad accident when either one of mine finally blow.

 

The AAM rear diffs I've found to be pretty bullet-proof, it's the LSDs and those damn clips that are poorly designed crap. Been many a Ram rear end that's locked up when a clip jammed in the ring/pinion.

That aluminum driveshaft just happened to be the weak link that let go.

At least that would be my guess.

BTW - Differential service at 10,000 and 20,000 miles? That's actually way too often - book calls for 30k with synthetic fluids. Why a diff. service so early and often? That kinda raises a red flag with my that something isn't totally kosher here...

 

Why isn't that kosher? I have always changed the diff on my vehicles every 10k. Why would that cause the diff to lockup? This should not have happen. In the maintenance Schedule I read it said to "Inspect and change axle fluid if vehicle is a taxi, police vehicle or heavy towing" at 30k.

 

You should also report it to the NHTSA website so they can watch this issue.
Sliding out of control like that is s serious safety problem. Glad you didn't get hurt or hurt someone else. Would have freaked me out for sure....Can you imagine that happening on a snow covered road. yikes.