Curious about more of your thoughts and experience in the "Cummins in Dodge", wonder your reaction to
- interesting take on diesels here...
I've come across this video before. I agree with a lot of what he says. I disagree on the costs...diesels are more expensive, both initially and in terms of maintenance, but in the long run (assuming we can get at least a half million miles) they should be cheaper by the calculations I did before we bought it. We are approaching 100,000 miles with zero issues, and so far everything is as we expected cost-wise. I do like to torture my wife with the idea that the turbo might fail and we'll have to shell out $10k to replace it, but in reality turbo failures are very rare. I definitely agree on the complexity being too high, but that's my complaint with ALL modern vehicles; it will take a world war for people to understand how bad the complexity issues really are...but for now, everyone wants more and more technology jammed in. I keep my trusty Kawasaki KLR 650 motorcycle around for bulletproof reliability...it's the A-10 Warthog of the motorcycle world. At any rate, most of the problems I've read about with the Dodge/Ram trucks leading up to my era (ours is a 2016) were electronic in nature, which happens to be my area of expertise. We gambled a little knowing that there had been electronics issues in the earlier years and the complainers were, justifiably, very vocal; but we though they would likely have them sorted out in the year we bought...so far, it seems to have paid off. (The complaints about Dodge/Ram electronics in Gen 4 trucks reminded me of the complaints you hear about Harley-Davidson motorcycles being unreliable, which was primarily an artifact of the 1970's AMF years. Those problems got fixed, and they've actually been pretty reliable bikes ever since.). Refilling the DEF sucks, but it's not nearly the pain in the butt that the guy in the video makes it out to be.
In my opinion, the most important and potentially costly part of a vehicle is the engine...so going with the Cummins seemed reasonable to me right off the bat (and I have a straight-6 gas engine in my Jeep, so I was already a fan of that engine configuration for simplicity and ease of maintenance). It's just an incredibly solid engine, despite the complex subsystems that have been added on over the years. Looking at the structure of the vehicle itself, Fords are the clear winner. However, a lot of structural issues I read about with Dodge/Ram seemed to in areas where the roads get salted or the vehicles are getting abused (I live in California where we don't have salty roads, and both my wife and I are very careful, meticulous drivers with the truck)...so not too worried here. The Allison transmission is super nice in the Chevy's, but if you aren't towing huge loads (the biggest we tow is our 560) and aren't treating your truck like a race car (mostly an issue for the younger crowd), the Dodge/Ram transmission should be fine.
I'll add a key point here where I disagree with the guy in the video for the Dodge/Ram Cummins setup: IF PROPERLY MAINTAINED and NOT ABUSED, I don't see any reason why this truck wouldn't last until 1 million miles. I've put my money where my mouth is, and we fully intend to see if we can make that million mile mark.
A couple of other things I liked about American diesels in general:
1.) I'm an economics junkie. We're in an era of economic trade wars and supply chain breakdowns. You could see it coming from a structural standpoint a decade ago, and it's painfully obvious to the regular folks (with a low tolerance for the dismal science of economics) right now. Having an American vehicle offers a slight edge that you might be able to get parts if things go wrong on your vehicle. Not perfect, of course, since most parts are made overseas these days whether the vehicle is domestic or foreign, but at least American-OWNED companies should have an edge in either getting priority OR getting bureaucratic red tape cut to manufacture parts domestically if things completely break down.
2.) The range of our truck is around 500 miles. I really like that. I can make it from my house in Napa, CA to Elko, NV (almost to UT) on one tank. Not as common to have amazing ranges in gas vehicles. It helps when you can't find open gas stations nearby (I'm looking at YOU, western Nebraska!).
The smaller straight-6 diesel in the Chevy's and GMC's that they have now does intrigue me. I'm curious to see how that experiment turns out. My daughter and son-in-law just got one (the GMC), so I'm frequently pinging them with questions. So far, they really like it. From what I've seen, they have a lot of well-thought out features.
