Hi All, I just drove home (250 miles) my first Dodge Diesel truck. It's a 2003 Ram 2500 diesel 4x4 6speed flatbed. It has 260k miles and is the work truck base model (power nothing, no extras at all, about the only things i see are CC, A/C, and a CD player. Even the windows and door locks, mirrors etc are all manual. Honestly I don't mind on most things, less to go wrong. Even the jump seat is solid with no lid to open.


I have some basic questions. I read somewhere that you're not supposed to shut the truck off after you drive it right away cause you'll fry the turbo? How does that work? how long do you leave it idling? If I'm on the freeway going 60mph for 30 minutes then pull off at a parking lot do i just sit in the truck?

Second. gear #1 is basically useless as i need to shift in less than a second. The way it feels I shift into 5th when I'm going around 30mph and into 6th at around 40 and by 60 I'm around 2k rpm in 6th. So basically 1-4 gears are parking lot speed gears...?

What things should I do first to the truck? Is there a pretty standard favorite set of fluids for these trucks? I normally use regular oil with 1qt of original lucas oil stabilizer in my vehicles. Is this any different?

The e-brake feels nothing like any truck I've owned. it just clicks down to the bottom. seems to keep the truck from rollling though but not sure how strong it ingages as the pedal clicks to the floor. Normal or something wrong?

On the drive home i noticed the temp was right at the middle of the gage anytime i was moving, stopped it would go up a smidge, I'm assuming that's normal?

The interior is a bit worn (mostly the seats) so I was thinking of swapping them out. I read I can swap with 09 leather seats? this is the manual so would the jump seat swap out the same? I'm tempted to just swap out all the seats at once but need to retain seating for 6 (two adults, two young kids and two car seats).

We bought the truck to tow a camper trailer that we've yet to purchase so really interested in anything that will make the truck more reliable, tow better, get better mpg, run cooler would be of interest. No smog or vehicle inspections of any kind so most things are on the table especially when it comes to MPG and reliability.

 

Moved to the diesel forums for you.

-nk