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2025 Ram 1500 Current Owners - Discussion, Feedback, and Problems

Laramieblue said:
My Tacoma's battery would die after sitting for a couple of weeks so being an Electronics Engineer I did some research and discovered the newer vehicles have many computers constantly drawing power from the battery. This continual draw is called Parasitic current, and this is what I found for the amount of current draw. “Typically, the normal amount of parasitic draw is between 50 and 85 milliamps in newer cars and less than 50 milliamps for older cars.”
What I did to determine what my truck was drawing is to remove one of the leads off of the battery and hook up a Volt/ohm/current meter at the 10 amp setting. Then I closed all the doors, shut down the engine, removed the key and I was able to watch the current draw go down and finally stabilize at 62 milliamps. Car batteries are designed to have lots of starting or cranking current but very little current for being continuously drawn upon to keep electronics powered up. I looked at my batteries' Amp hour rating and divided it by the 62 milliamps and the result was about 325 hours or around 2 weeks.
What you could do is measure the current like I did but I would suggest you have a battery charger or jump start battery connected to both cables or battery clamps when you disconnect one of them so your truck will always have power to keep all the computer memory intact. Once you have your meter connected between one of the battery terminals and the cable which will power up all the computers you can disconnect the charger so all the power is coming from the battery and not the charger. You will need to reconnect the charger before removing the meter to keep power to the electronics while you reconnect the terminal. The goal is to ensure you have power to the truck's electronics at all time to avoid memory loss to the computers.

If you like to troubleshoot your issue yourself you could connect up the meter then pull out one fuse at a time from each fuse box and see which fuse is drawing all the power. You might just find one circuit or fuse doing all the power drain or several fuses draining the power. At least you can now go to the dealer and tell them which fuses are doing all the power draw. Just make you don't have any electronics powered up or truck doors open which will activate some computers or lights.

You would think the dealer's service department could do this but sometimes the Manufacturer tells the dealers what they can do to troubleshoot trucks and what they are not allowed to do. Perhaps this type of troubleshooting which is very detailed and will take several hours to complete is not allowed. This may be why they tell you they can't find the problem, perhaps the service department doesn't have techs that are trained to troubleshoot or repair the complex electronics.

I have had this experience with my Tacoma, dealer's service department and Toyota's manufacture's imposed limitation to what service techs can do. It is limited to plug and play type of service, diagnosis issue to a system then replace the whole system or major components within that system.

Next time you go in for service for a dead battery ask them if they have done a parasitic draw test and what are the results that were noted in the service log. Make sure you get the results, that will show they did the test. If it is above the limits ask them what troubleshooting they did to find the source of the draw. The steps above are the easiest way to single out the cause, if they didn't do it then ask what steps they did do to find the source of the current draw.

Good luck and hope novel this didn't put you to sleep.....
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My 2000 Boxter lasts about three or four weeks for this very reason so have a dead battery every spring.
 
a3vr said:
How long does it take to drain the battery? When we picked up ours back in June the battery was near dead. Barely started in the morning and it seemed like electronics were cycling on and off all the time. Haven't noticed as much electronic noise coming from the truck lately and the battery seems to keep a charge but its also driven every day.

Edit: Back when we got the truck I had read that the phone app was causing a drain. I cancelled the ram subscriptions where you can remote start and track the truck since I wasn't going to pay for them anyways. Do you have that still active?
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I heard that the hurricane has an electronic powered turbo cooler that cools the turbo after you shut the truck off well without the engine running no electronics should be active it's just common sense if you had a light that doesn't turn off eventually it will drain your battery. They really are something special with these new trucks, hopefully you guys don't have the issue I had with the plastic thermostat breaking and they wouldn't put a new engine in. They just wanted to tear it down and rebuild it. I told them absolutely not and eventually got them to take the truck back. Keep in mind I didn't even have it for the full 30 days.
 
Jared B said:
I'm still around, just don't have the chance to be as active on the forum as I'd like to be.
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Good to hear from you. Hope you are well. You'll never know how much i appreciated how much you and this place helped me with info with my 19. And now with the long wait for my 25. (y)
 
RAM 4times said:
Good to hear from you. Hope you are well. You'll never know how much i appreciated how much you and this place helped me with info with my 19. And now with the long wait for my 25. (y)
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I'm doing great! I hope you are as well.

I'm glad this place has grown into a great resource for owners and people researching trucks. The members really make the forum what it is.
 
So 600 miles in and engine still sounds like crap when cold starting. Will rev up super high upon start and rev up and down continuously until the engine winds down below 1000rpm. No cel tho I’m expecting it soon
 
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Bsenra11 said:
Which ones did you go with? The morimoto or GTR bulbs?
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I went with the GTR bulbs. Morimotos have a built in fan, and the tail light housings on these new trucks have limited space. They work great. I was going to do the front park light/signals too, but you have to be a midget contortionist to get in there. If the time comes to replace the front lights, I'll let the dealer do it. There is no way to get my hands down in there, regardless of how much stuff I remove to get to them. I wear a size 16 ring if that tells you anything...
 
My 25 was plagued with gremlins when I got it. The back up camera kept getting the blue screen of death ~ Fixed. Kept getting a persistent CEL, and the dealer couldn't figure it out. Went from cam phaser to the whole cam, and then to the tone wheel on the back of the cam, nothing worked. They finally said screw it, and dropped a new engine in it (at 479 miles on the clock), which took 5 weeks to complete the job. I got a 23 SRT Charger for a loaner, which didn't bother me at all. The end result was a new engine, which has performed flawlessly. Stellantis also gave me an eight year/120K mile bumper to bumper zero deductible Max-Care warranty, and made 2 payments on my pickup for my trouble/frustration. Life is good.
 
Dex17 said:
So 600 miles in and engine still sounds like crap when cold starting. Will rev up super high upon start and rev up and down continuously until the engine winds down below 1000rpm. No cel tho I’m expecting it soon
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Yea I’m having the same issue. Came to post about this. Only had the truck a few weeks. Any ideas?
 
Is the CEL/misfire code issue only happening on the SO Hurricanes so far?

Anybody with a HO Hurricane having the issue?

Also, I saw some reports of some hurricane engines in Wagoneers grenading after the thermostat failed. Have seen one report of same in a 1500 in this forum. Anybody else experience thermostat issues and is so was it a SO or HO?

Getty made a video and mentiined the thermostat issue. Anybody know of Ram is replacing the thermostats with a new design going firward?

Thanks
 
Jkub said:
Is the CEL/misfire code issue only happening on the SO Hurricanes so far?

Anybody with a HO Hurricane having the issue?

Also, I saw some reports of some hurricane engines in Wagoneers grenading after the thermostat failed. Have seen one report of same in a 1500 in this forum. Anybody else experience thermostat issues and is so was it a SO or HO?

Getty made a video and mentiined the thermostat issue. Anybody know of Ram is replacing the thermostats with a new design going firward?

Thanks
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Someone mentioned on here before that it’s a complete different thermostat design. Also I haven’t heard any issues with the HO yet but many people here are stilling waiting for them.
 
BunkMoreland said:
Yea I’m having the same issue. Came to post about this. Only had the truck a few weeks. Any ideas?
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Just got a CEL this morning on cold start. Should I call for a warranty visit? Or wait and see if it continues to get the warning light through multiple trips?
 
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BunkMoreland said:
Just got a CEL this morning on cold start. Should I call for a warranty visit? Or wait and see if it continues to get the warning light through multiple trips?
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I believe there is a software fix for the CEL. but you have to go to the dealer to get it right now is what I understand. it won't be sent over the air yet anyway.
 
BunkMoreland said:
Yea I’m having the same issue. Came to post about this. Only had the truck a few weeks. Any ideas?
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Nope. Know really nothing about this engine so don’t even know if it’s normal or not but just sounds like it’s gonna go out on me when starting up. Other than that the thing is smooth as butter while driving and shifting
 
I've put probably another 800 miles on my truck since the software update at the dealership on Monday and so far so good. Hopefully that continues to be the case!
 
Here’s a vid of it cold starting. Still no check engine light and runs fine but still not a fan of how it sounds until it drops below 1000 rpm’s. 800 miles in so far
https://imgur.com/a/rhXzJbW
 
Dex17 said:
Here’s a vid of it cold starting. Still no check engine light and runs fine but still not a fan of how it sounds until it drops below 1000 rpm’s. 800 miles in so far
https://imgur.com/a/rhXzJbW
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Humm, definitely revs up a lot and I can hear the occultation. Not sure what to think though as I don’t know what these trucks are supposed to do yet myself. If you get a CEL take it in for the software update.
 
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