We Have Discovered A Major Issue With Our Long-Term Laramie Sport:
Our Truck Starts Without The Keyfob Present...
With only about a dozen miles till we hit 10,000 miles on the odometer of our long-term 2019 Ram 1500 Laramie Sport Crew Cab 4×4, we have uncovered a pretty serious flaw with our truck. While our truck has performed pretty much flawlessly since we purchased it in May of this year, it wasn’t until yesterday that I discovered that our truck will start without the keyfob being present in the cab of the truck.
That’s right, the truck will start without the keyfob being present. I realized this after I left the office yesterday. I had mistakenly left my keys on my desk and hopped in our truck to make a quick run to the bank before it closed. Now, not having to insert a key into the ignition has its benefits, but our truck has always told us that the key was not detected if it wasn’t within the cab of the truck and would not allow the truck to start. So when nothing popped up on the Electronic Vehicle Information Center (EVIC), I assumed I had the keys in my jacket pocket.
Now, even without the key on my person, the truck would have still run until I shut it off at the bank. Then it should have recognized there was no key again and not allowed me to start it again. But when I got done at the bank, I climbed into the cab of the truck, pushed the start button with my foot on the brake and it turned over and I continued home.
It wasn’t until I got home and went to unlock the front door of my house that I realized that my keys were missing. I looked everywhere in the cab and even pulled the all-weather mats out of the truck to see if somehow they had fallen on the floor underneath them. It was at this point I called my father puzzled, and he said that since the truck could start he felt the keys were located in the cab of the truck somewhere. I drove over to his house, where we again pulled everything out of the cabin to realize there were no keys present.
I managed to drive back to work, get a spare set of keys to unlock the office to find my keys on the desk where I had left them. I checked the keyfob to make sure that it worked, which it did. Still puzzled, I set the keys about 15 feet away from the truck and it again started.
After getting home, I played around with the truck some more, realizing that as long as the truck was unlocked someone could just jump in it and start it up and take off. However, as long as I had the keyfob on my person I could lock the truck using the doorhandle lock button or the keyfob and once the truck was locked, no one could enter the truck. But if someone were to shatter one of the side windows, they could still start it and drive off.
So the only thing I can think of that might allow this to do what it is doing, is a recent software update Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) did for a recall on our truck when I took it in for its second oil change a couple of weeks back. Our dealer updated the flash memory of the Occupant Restraint Controller (ORC) which had been recalled in late May, on certain 2019 and 2020 Ram 1500 models. We can’t say if that is the problem, but it is the only thing that we can think of.
For the past week, Ram sent us a 2019 Ram 1500 Laramie Black Crew Cab 4×4 to compare against our Laramie Sport. So with that truck at our disposal, we hadn’t run our truck as much as normal and never really noticed the issue since the keyfob was on our person the whole time while shooting our comparison which will be coming out in the near future.
Now we are not blaming our dealer at all. They have been superb to us since we purchased the truck and I couldn’t be happier with the service. But we will have to take the truck in this week to solve this issue. The only thing is with the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S., we may have to wait till next week. So in the meantime, we will be holding our keyfob close and making sure that the truck is locked at all times we are not in the cab.
But we want you, our readers and forum members to check your 2019 and 2020 Ram 1500 for similar issues. If you do have this issue, be sure to contact your local Ram dealer immediately. We will let you know the results of our findings after we get our truck back from the dealer.
Question…you mention getting close to 10,000 miles now, and doing a second oil change. My dealership said oil changes are not necessary unless the oil change icon indicator comes on, or every 10,000 miles…whatever comes first. Hard to believe, he printed me out a service bulletin stating this. Thoughts on this as you are on your second oil change reaching 10,000 miles, and I am reaching 9,000 on mine with now yet to have my first one done.
They may not be required by the manufacturer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have it changed. Your comfort level with extended oil changes may vary. I had mine changed at about 4,400 miles. I don’t like extended mileage on a new engine. The next oil change will likely be at the notification.
Both times I had our Laramie Sport’s oil changed before long trips. That’s why.
Mr. Sowles, our Utica High Vocational Auto Shop teacher advised us that if we ever bought a new car to drive it straight home and change the oil right away. His rationale for this was when a newly built engine starts for the first time, there is a fair amount of metal to metal contact and it is best to just change the oil and get that out of the equation (this was in the late 1980s that he said this).
I don’t know how true that is, but when I last bought a new vehicle (long time ago . . .), I seem to recall the owner’s manual recommending an oil change in the first few hundred miles, then again a few thousand miles later before starting regular oil change intervals. My memory on that may be wrong, but seventeen years and nearly 300,000 miles later, whatever I did seems to have worked. I’ve been putting Amsoil in it the entire time and I strictly followed the engine break in procedure (which was boring as hell . . . constantly up shifting and down shifting to keep RPMs changing), but again, it seems to have worked. I have noticed no degradation of performance or gas mileage in all that time. It burns oil now and because it is a rust bucket with two tires in the junk yard and the other two on ice, I rarely change the oil, just the filter, and add oil as needed.
For the first few years I was changing the oil at recommended intervals (3,000 miles or so) while using full synthetic (10,000 mile) oil. The oil was so clean that it was difficult to read the dipstick – for at least the first year I had it, if not longer. Babying that engine has saved me a ton of money (which was saved and invested and has grown considerably since), so my next vehicle will be much, much nicer. : )
Now, about this starting without the key issue – that needs to get fixed. There is no way in Hell I am dropping somewhere on the order of $80,000 on a TRX if someone can break the window and drive away with it. That needs to get fixed ASAP. That is a deal breaker.
If that had been my truck, I would NOT have plastered it all over the internet, I’d have kept my mouth shut until Ram could work out a solution. If Ram wasn’t making good on it fast enough, THEN I’d let my fellow Ram owners know of the security flaw. But to announce it over the internet before Ram has a fix, goes against all security protocols, and is just not good sense.
It’s been a week – any news from the dealer regarding the vehicle starting without a key present?
It’s been two weeks – any news from the dealer regarding the vehicle starting without a key present?
It’s been three weeks – any news from the dealer regarding the vehicle starting without a key present?
Honestly it’s probably his receiver unit is bad inside the truck. Somehow the truck thinks his keys are in the truck and that seems to be the easiest solution. If that is the problem then the software should have a check for the sensor and if it fails the check that is stays closed requiring it to act like the battery is weak.