Hi all,

Forgive me if this is already a sticky or a FAQ but I’m on my phone and the website was being a PITA lol.

Im straying away from my typical loitering in the first gen Dakota forum to ask this question.

My dad has a 2015 2500 Cummins 4x4 with ~82k miles on it or so. Bone stock, literally nothing has been done to it. He was saying he needs to get it aligned again but both the shop and the dealer said it’s non-adjustable and they need to cut the welds and reweld it. This leads me to ask 2 questions. First of all, why? Why would they design it like that lol. Second, are there any aftermarket kits for a stock ride height truck that offers adjustable control arms and such for alignment?

I haven’t actually looked under the truck enough to remember exactly what it looks like, but I did do some digging for parts and only found stuff for 3rd gen’s or for trucks that are 4+” lifted.

 

starting in 13 ram went away from the control arm setup to a single trailing arm with 2 mount points, I have not looked them over very closely however I would have expected they used some type of cam bolt system still. The truck is 10 years old and unless he bought it new there the possibility a poor quality shop could have welded the cam in place if that's the case.

I had my truck aligned with new tires a couple years ago, I used the thuren spec sheet, which i highly recommend if you have any cupping/wear issues, my tires are worn flat across. They mentioned nothing of the sorts for welding, whole job tires n all didn't take 2-3 hours from drop off time.

Id recommend finding a different shop that's familiar with the front end.

 

I’ll relay this to him. He’s been taking it to the dealer recently for a bunch of (unsurprisingly) emissions related recalls and stuff and I think they were the ones who told him about it. It isn’t some dealer bs that he needs an alignment as it is evident by the wear patterns on his front tires, just confuses me with the whole welding part.

 

There are two bolts that hold the control arm to the front axle, on the axle end. Other end is just a bushing. The lower bolt on the control arm is a cam bolt for adjusting the front..... Shouldn't be any need for cutting/welding there.

 

Thuren Spec Sheet

 

There 2 jam nuts on the pitman to knuckle adhljusting sleeve had a recall where ram said to weld the jam nuts to the sleeve. Welds on mine had to be cut to do an alignment.

 

Yeah THIS is what was actually done, I must’ve misread what he meant. I figured uneven tire wear from inside to outside was a camber issue which would be control arm alignment so that’s where my mind went.

Isn’t the only purpose of the adjustment for the drag link to center the steering wheel and the actual alignment for the toe is on the tie rod?