I guess you didn't really read what I posted. First I said my 2015 Ram was the best truck I ever owned. They had the quality and design right. (I've owned 1 Ram, 4 Chevy trucks, 6 Ford trucks). I currently have two FCA products with the 3.6 and 8 speed which I consider about the best engine/trans out there. I have not owned and will not own a Ford pickup with the lawn mower engines and turbos strapped on for the reasons you posted. I did not say all 5th gen had problems and I said nothing about the non E/T 5.7 or the 8 speed. Don't know where you got that from. What I said was that there are more problems with the 5th gen Rams than I have heard of on any other Forum of any other make I read about. I expect a new model to have some teething pains especially on a new system like E/T but come on, bad welds, leaking windows, A/C that doesn't blend right, steering problems, cracked trim. These are basics. They had no problem with making Rams right up until now so what happened? Where's quality control? Like I said, I think they rushed to market and changed a lot of stuff that didn't need changing. My last P/U before the Ram was a Silverado. Had many problems and none could be fixed. The 2014s up have lots of trucks with vibration problems. Yet those fan boys will get jacked around for years by GM then they'll throw in the towel and get...........another GM. My response to Silver64 was to agree that a company will loose business from customers who see that all of a sudden quality drops and the customer his not taken care of immediately. The OP has been out of his truck for two months and counting waiting on a part for a new truck. That's beyond unacceptable. So if I hurt your feelings, I apologize. Nothing personal and I'm tickled pink that your truck made the cut for a whole six weeks. But as a consumer I will not buy anything that has such a high and diverse problem rate. I hope they get it squared away soon so I can look at getting another Ram.
Maybe we both came off sounding hurt, this isn’t the Ford F150 forum, ha ha. If you were to look at that one you’d see threads with over 5400 individual posts and a million views (cooled seats), as well as pages and pages of other serious concerns. Remember the problems in 2011-2012 with the new 3.5 ecoboosts sucking in water due to the placement of the lower air intake, and then hydrolocking? Now that was some engineering, yet Ford repeatedly claimed that no engine had ever been tested so rigorously. (Evidently the Baja doesn’t have too much water on its highways)
I agree that Chevy has had issues, the “chevy shake” and their tranny are two, thats why I avoided them and bought a Ford in 2015. I never even considered RAM, didn’t know anything about them despite seeing lots of gen 4’s driving around.
I also agree with you that all first year models are unproven and that leaves the early adopters as the test mules. Then when you add modern “just in time” parts sourcing to the mix, you have these parts shortages (the national back orders) where the assembly line gets the part instead of the already sold and broken truck. Can’t have the assembly line idle so the companies make the buyer suffer.
Now how can companies address this? There’s the individual defective parts that are needed to address buyers spread out all over the country. You can’t rob the assembly line, too many workers idled, and dealers are screaming for their inventory so they can sell. It’s a problem of too many complicated components sourced from dozens and or hundreds of suppliers that you cannot control the quality from, as well as buying from lower bidders in an effort to keep your component costs down.
In dreamland, every car/truck that was out of service for more than a couple weeks would then cause RAM to make the guy’s payment for that month as well as provide the free loaner, until a deal can be reached (like a buy-back). RAM would have to absorb some losses to keep their dealers happy but they’d also keep the customer happy.
I’m glad you liked your 4th gen, and hope that you look over everybodies offerings this or next year and find what you want. I personally doubt you’d be thrilled with a Titan, the Toy hasn’t seen much updating in years, Ford has its issues still and now are considering a major 2020 update in order to fight off RAM. Thats going to be another 1st year to avoid. It’s not an easy world when you have a broken truck, for sure.
Let’s just home that RAM Care can pressure their higher ups to just buy this guys truck back and give him a shiny new one. He doesn’t have a lemon, just a parts issue, so the vehicle should be able to be resold without that blemish. That would be the right thing to do for him.
(....although you would love Hemi with those add ons on new body 1500) My Rebel with air suspension, Hellwig bar, and 1" wider wheels than stock is very nimble and an evasive maneuver in traffic is almost like a good handling car and thats with Duratrac Goodyears on it.
