I thought I had done all my home work before purchasing this truck. Boy was I wrong...lol I wanted a diesel truck {1st one} and I liked the reviews on the Cummins compared to the others. I like the Dodge cosmetics and design.
I purchased a 2004 Ram 2500 130K, 5.9 24 V HO, 2 WD, auto, 4 dr. shorty. I am not a mudder, rock climber, nor is my intensions to hot rod this truck. I do however want to install a programmer for economy as well as towing purposes. On my 3 mile test drive {salesmans request} The truck ran very healthy and strong. Shifted nicely, and when it was supposed to. The exterior is very straight and clean as is the interior. It was wet outside and late in the day but I did notice a small weep on the trans as well as motor oil at the pan, the previous owner had installed a remote button which operates a horn, left on a Banks intake, muffler delete pipe, and a EGT sensor probe. There is a mount inside as well, so I think it is safe to assume the previous owner had a programmer in it, but its long gone now.
I went back a week later and set down with the salesman who at that point told me that the dealership did NOT offer any sort of warrant for any diesel with over 100K. That scared me pretty good but the leaks aren't bad and the truck looks and runs so well I decided to purchase it after talking with the mechanic who had serviced it for retail sale. I did asked him why the turbo was silent. NO whistle, no whine ? He told me that DODGE diesel turbos do NOT make any sort of noise like the others and he assured me it was working perfectly. I must admit it runs great with plenty of power and torque. So I bought the thing...lol
On the way home I noticed that the defrosters aren't working properly ?
Turns out to be a common problem and expensive repair.
I also noticed that the OEM horn does in fact work using the keyless entry only ?
Also a common problem, that could be anything from a clock spring to a major module. Could be an expensive repair.
The exhaust is all there with exception that it has a muffler delete pipe.
Have to buy and install one before I can take it for the Maryland State Safety Inspection as well as emission's test.
No warranty or not I called the dealership and was basically told, you bought it in AS IS condition. You want it fixed bring it in and we will fix it for a fee.
Well now I have been reading about a ton of other issues that these trucks seem to be prone to.
Bad transmissions {@ low mileage}
Bad lift pumps
Bad wiring in general
Bad suspension components @ low mileage, {early replacement
recommended}
Does anyone know of a honest shop in Maryland ? Or can a owner of one of these trucks offer any real suggestions as far a maintance, lubricants, etc ? What's the REAL DEAL with these trucks?
I know you can't believe everything you read on the web, BUT when you read the same thing over and over there has to be some truth in it.
I have had this truck in my possession for 6 days and have driven it only 11 miles. I am just scared to death this truck is going to leave me stranded with an expensive repair that I can't afford.

 

Moving to the correct section. Buying a used vehicle is a crap shoot. If you have lived in Md fit very long you should know that it won't pass inspection without a muffler, at any rate, the dealer should have had it inspected prior to sale. Good luck.

 

Well I guess with the first question.

Did you make a mistake buying the truck?

You bought a 12 year old truck. If you thought it wasn't going to require fairly immediate maintenance and was going to be problem free - then you probably bought the wrong truck. 98% of owners are going to slack on maintenance and let issues slide if they know they are trading soon. I don't care what brand it is and as someone who's owned all brands & is ASE certified, they all have Achilles heels.

Now for the issue. Leaks - nobody should buy a vehicle with a leak of any kind. Insist all leaks either fluid or air be fixed prior to sale. Otherwise walk. Now you have leaks to fix.

Truck has been deleted and tuned. More half the time means it's been abused. If not, it still can't pass inspection. If passing emissions is important to you this should have been negotiated as well. Now you have exhaust work to pay for.

Problems: Defroster - broken blend door. Plagues every modern vehicles with plastic Chinese blend doors. Just ripped the dash out of a Lincoln not long ago to replace two broken blend doors. Cost about $80 each. Labor about 7 hours.
Clock Spring: Yep pretty common in any vehicle with air bag in the steering wheel. Cost about $55, labor 2-3 hours. Simple job if you have a wheel puller.

Transmission issues? I've not seen it. Yeah Dodge will never get over the bad reputation of their **** poor automatics of 20 years ago, but the Daimler Mercedes designed are pretty reliable. Of course you start throwing tuners on them and increase torque a good bit and you'll blow a tranny. I don't care if it's an Allison.

Suspension: Yeah, the front ends anyway are a bit substandard. Expect to replace hubs and basically all the non-greasable components at 100,000 - 120,000 miles. Probably due and a reason previous owner traded it in at 130,000 miles.

Lift pumps: yeah here and there. Seen trucks with 500,000 miles on original and seen some trucks eat em often. Still not near as bad as a Ford 6.0 though.

Wiring : I've not seen it. Any I've repaired with wiring issues were caused by people f*cking with it.

My advice: first learn to negotiate vehicle purchases better. There were plenty of red flags before you bought. Second, learn to do at least basic repairs and maintenance yourself to save $90 or more an hour (seen some dealers over $150 an hour to work on diesels). Third, stay off forums. 15% on forums are die hard enthusiasts, the rest have issues they can't fix. Either they chose the wrong shop, got hosed, or their buddy who is an "expert" screwed their vehicle up. Very poor sampling.

If you go by forums, every Ram transmission fails, every Ford diesel since the 7.3 blows heads and turbos and every Ford and Duramax with a CP4 has it fail before 30,000 miles and takes the engine out with it...

 

Hammer pretty much nailed it! (pun intended). LOts of these things you have read I have not read or seen. I can tell you that my dad has a '99 diesel and it is going on about 350,000 miles right now. Was there problems and things that had to be replaced along the way? SURE there was.I can tell you he has beaten the crap out of this truck and it only left him stranded 2 times and he had bought it used in 2001.1 time he went to California and the lift pump went out and the other was at home and the injector pump went out. as far as the leaks goes I wouldn't have bought any vehicle with a visible leak unless it was something really stupid and i could fix it very cheaply.The exhaust issue I would go see if i could find one at a junk yard.As for the front end...Of coarse things are going to go out! It's a truck with a big a** heavy diesel motor in it! I don't think you bought a bad truck! sure there are things that have to be fixed.But that goes with any used vehicle.I really honestly don't think its going to leave you stranded.

 

Thanks guys. I spent about 7 hours on it yesterday and another
6 on it today. Drove it around some and it still impresses me for being a diesel. Not sluggish at all, and extremely good throttle response. Most of what I did was to look for negative things. I think I found all of them in my initial post. Nothing new/negative was found. You guys are 100% correct in all that you said. But my assumption was that with this truck sitting out on the front line of a Chrysler dealership it must have been looked over and any negative issues resolved before offering it for sale. The only aftermarket things I was able to find were the intake {Banks}, the air cleaner assy., {Araid}.
I had cleaned the trans. and rear of the engine off last week to see just how bad they were leaking. After about 90 miles this weekend {I know that's not a lot} both are bone dry. So it must have been long term weepage that I was looking at. The trans. never bothered me too bad. I knew I was going to install a deeper pan and it looked like just the pan gasket tyo begin with. I did find a few oil pan bolts that were loose. Tightened them to spec and all seems good so far. I just wanted to make sure the dealership didn't clean off a leaking rear main seal in the attempt of hiding it. I did go to the junkyard this morning. Mainly looking for a dash that had been removed. I want to see just how hard these doors/actuators are going to be to replace. NOT one Ram 2500 of any age there ! As a matter of fact there were only 2 Ram 1500's and they looked to be gas mdls. in the early to mid 90's. As far as my ability to 'deal' with a salesman. Well I am pretty easy to get along with. My 'assumption' that a New/Used Chrysler dealership had some sort of responsibility to their customers to make sure that a vehicle had a muffler, and the defrost was operational. Especially considering people hop these trucks up, and the vent work has been such a major issue for years. There was no dealing with them.
I had to threaten to back out of the deal to get them to replace the serpentine belt on the delivery day. All and all the truck seems pretty solid. I am NOT looking to go 4 wheeling, mudding, tow 100K, or race it.
At this point the only thing that pisses me off is the defrosters.
The trans I had plans for any way, the missing muffler was no big deal{$80}, the alternator still bothers me some because I had to purchase and install it. I feel the absolute least the dealership could do would be to repair the defrosters. All in all I guess I'll live threw it....lol
Lesson learned !!!!!

 

listen, it sounds like you bought a decent USED truck. Sadly, the cummins may run forever, but the truck will still age. Dealers do not have any responsibility, like anyone else, on a used car sale. Unless a warranty is implied, all sales are as is/final.

I payed just shy of 5 figures for my 01 in january, and went into it knowing it needed some work, wound up about $4k in parts later and I'm still fixing dumb stuff. In my case, it was a private sale, but its a 150k mile 14 year old truck
Mine needed every rubber and steel brake line, wiring to the lift pump failed that caused a new lift pump, injection pump, and a tuner (I needed that or at least gauges to keep an eye on things). Then I did a carrier bearing and a rear diff cover. "The a/c works" as I bought it on a 10* day, well after a new line and pulling the dash to replace the evaporator it works now. I had to do spring buckets as they were rusty when I bought it, but in short order they completely disintegrated. Broke one rear shackle, replaced both of them. Just did a front axle u joint. Needed some body rust repair, some is "done" some more to do. I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff, but all in all I did every last repair, and I'm over $4000 into just parts in the last 10 months. But I can't blame anything, its a used car. They all need something, its rare a car in need of nothing gets sold.

 

Hey marcar,
I guess I am just ole fashion. I surely understand the meaning of NO WARRANTY. Normally I would have thought that considering it was from a New & Used Chrysler dealership they wouldn't want anyone out there bad mouthing them, get sued over some sort of issue like 'no brakes', so they would either wholesale the truck or look it over and be honest with it's condition. I live in Maryland and I don't really like it here, but I can say one thing, here it is state law that any licensed dealer be them either new or used "HAS" to offer a minimum of 30/1000 warranty. I would have not purchased any vehicle that needed a ton of work regardless.
I paid special attention to the suspension, exterior paint, condition of interior, glass, chrome, rubber, seals, etc. I mentioned it was a wet day when I 1st stopped to look at it. It had rained buckets just an hour before, so crawling around in the mud wasn't on my agenda. But I still looked under for the most part. If it hadn't been so late in the day {8:30 PM} I would have been more carefull to check all the accys. as well as a longer test drive. I wasn't aware of the Dodge defroster issue at that time or I would have ck'd that right away. I have had my share over the years with installing different heater cores, a/c evaporators, actuators, vacuum switches and defective hoses. NOT anything I want to do again. And I may add, that would have been a deal breaker if I would have known it. Of course the word "assume" is all on me. I just never heard of a dealer pulling off some shady stuff like that. I bought it in Delaware and I live in Maryland.
Its a clean, straight, rust free truck underneath as well as exterior and interior. It runs very well and shifts perfectly. So I am glad of that. Its a 2004, w/130K. I paid 16K, plus Md. taxes {$960}, and title fees. I have already replaced a defective alt., spent hours and hours pulling things apart just to see for myself what condition items are in. More recently I am thinking I am a real dumba$$ for paying what I did for a vehicle that doesn't have defrosters...lol On the up side, I found that it does have a free flow air box, so that's a good thing.

 

Ouch, $16k is a lot of money for a 2wd auto! However whats the blue book? These diesel trucks keep their value, even better than hondas or even wranglers.
As for rolling around in the mud, I'd have requested to use their shop! When my dad bought his 02 Dakota at a new Ford/Subaru dealer, we had looked at quite a few. Before we signed any paperwork we asked to use their lift. They gave us their alignment rack and we were under it for about an hour. When I bought my ram though, I felt your pain. I was in a parking lot on a 10* day with 30 mph wind gusts... I didn't spend more than 5-10 mins under the truck, granted it was a private seller.

I'm still saying, if you fix your known issues and the normal few more that will creep up on a used car, you should have a reliable vehicle that should treat you well.

 

Seems like most of you worries have been releived but what I read is no one addressed the turbo complaint. Stock Turbos have silencer ring making them quiet. If you are that concerned what are you making for boost? Also, pull the intake hose off compressor housing look at wheel for damage and check for shaft play. If it wiggles at all the bearing is failing. An EGT gauge would be very handy to have. Always let the truck run bringing EGT's down. When you shut the motor off so does the oil supply to the turbo. If shes good and hot still spinning well we all know how hot metal-metal works...

 

Buying a diesel is an expensive adventure... Been in the diesel world for 4 years now and there are only a few items that are cheap for diesels... Anyway the most pain in the butt part is the defrost... Its most likely the blend door.. If this truck isnt your sole dd then it will be a little easier to work on..

There are lots of forums out there with good info on it... Yes a forum can scare you on items but it can also guide you in the right direction on parts,shops and tackling items on your own....