Power Wagon Registry

So, I went to the Dodge dealer today, to inquire why almost 2 1/2 months have gone by & no one has called me telling me my parts are in & & i can make an appointment to get my truck fixed. They had NOTHING. No parts were ordered. I kept calm (which is VERY hard for me to do with this level of incompetence) & asked why. Again, they had NOTHING. So, the service manager went to parts to try & sort this out. I waited for 30 min. Nothing. Along comes the owner of the dealer. I smiled & said hi. He asked how i was doing. I said, ehh, OK i guess. He inquired why just ok, so i told him. He said this was unacceptable & i agreed. He said if i don't get some satisfaction soon to come find him personally. After he leaves, the service guy comes back. Said my front pinion seal will be in tomorrow, but they are gonna have to "diagnose the flashing locker problem". I said you already did, when i drove in with my camper hooked up 2 1/2 months ago, 13 codes & one was powertrain control module. He said they have no record of that (of course not, maybe because-the part is $500). So, it looks like i may have to hook up to camper & drive over 100 miles just to get it to do it again !!!

I also had to give him the part #'s for the transfer case position sensor & the rear locker module, again, that i got from this website.

I did not swear, yell or scream. I remained calm, cool & collected.

Now i feel like shit. I should have cussed those mother f*****s out, yelled & screamed. I think i would at least feel better, LOL

Friday morning for front pinion seal. My bet: they will say "can not duplicate problem."

Hello TwinStick, I know how frustrating it is to go through stuff like that it sucks, but I think you are being the better person by keeping your cool and usually it will get you better results in the end, I hope everything works out!

crazy stuff...i dont know how they hold a job...when i had my issue with the rr flashing ...it would come on after driving for about 50 hwy miles....the dealer had my truck for 5 weeks waiting for parts and get this tools they didnt have...i know what your feeling...i took it some where else and had repairs made in 4 days under warranty.....hope all goes well twin

It would be nice if they offered to do something for you, but they'd probably fuck that up too.

fbenross wrote:It would be nice if they offered to do something for you, but they'd probably fuck that up too.

Hey man, I know how you feel. If the truck is under warranty I'd look to see if there was an other local dealer, if it's not you couldn't pay me to have work done at a dealer. The last work I had done was a recall for the tie rod and the dope smoking "technicians" used an impact wrench to put the skid plate back on completely rounding two bolt heads off. For any work you can't do yourself hopefully you're lucky enough to live in a place with a good reputable 4x4 or drive train shop. In my experience if someone with grease covered hands walks out to your vehicle, talks about it a bit and then can talk you through some potential issues with never having to write a service slip....that's probably your place.

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The only dealer near me has really good donuts, so I cut them some slack.

At least they know what a PW is. I've been to 3 dealers who didn't know anything about PW's, or that they existed.

2011RPW wrote:At least they know what a PW is. I've been to 3 dealers who didn't know anything about PW's, or that they existed.

yea I asked my local dealer about the locker actuator and they knew what the PW was and knew what the actuator was but could not quote a price because they had never done one before and had no idea how hard the job would be....

Dealer near me has NEVER sold a PW. Never actually worked on mine either, except for the first steering recall. Have to go back for two more steering recalls and the air bag recall.

I'm fairly lucky as the dealer does the border patrol trucks and is very familiar with the PW.

Update:

Dropped truck off last night. They had my truck all day today. They did not call me. They did nothing to it. NOTHING.

They said: "apparently, they were also supposed to order the pinion nut & did not, so they could not even do that job." I said, "are you sure it was the pinion nut or the pinion crush sleeve?" He asked the mechanic & he said no, it was the pinion nut. I thought you could re-use the nut but not the crush sleeve ??? Any input on this would be MOST HELPFUL. Thanks.

The only good thing that came out of it was, there was codes in the computer that made them order the rear locker parts, to fix that. I told them to call a Dodge dealer close to the US/Mexican border because they work on these trucks all the time for Border Patrol.

You can't reuse a crush sleave II don't think. Keep me updated on the locker. Mine has been flashing for 3 years.

I didn't think so either. But i have also talked to mechanics that say they always do, with no issues. I'm thinking they have NFIdea what they are doing.

I might just get the local offroad shop to fix mine. They at least have worked on jeeps with similar lockers.

My understanding is that the crush sleeve is a one time deal. What happens when you reuse it. When you don't need that much crush. Now you have too much clearance.

Well crush is the operative word...crush sleeve...crush gasket like copper...not ment to be used twice.

Crushingggg


Sent from Canada

I know quite a few guys who just mark the location of the nut and re-tighten to the mark when replacing just the pinion seal. I can't imagine why the nut needs replaced unless they suspect the the threads to be the cause of the leak and not the pinion seal. Also with a new nut you don't have the reference mark to re-tighten it hmmm.

They're deformed thread locknuts that are intended for one use only, you can reuse them if you must but should use a liquid threadlocker. I've seen several axles damaged from reusing pinion nuts and not using loctite. It's definitely a common practice but it's not "best practices" As far as the crush sleeve, if you're replacing a pinion seal you should take a rotational torque measurement with an inch pound torque wrench for a reference and when you are done with the work tighten up incrementally until you're at spec. Most factory manuals will have a measurement to shoot for based off the original number, if you can't find such a thing you can do like AZ said. As far as reusing a crush sleeve in any other context the answer is an emphatic NO.

Great advice and yes loctite or rtv silicone is a great thread locker also! Probably going to reuse my stuff when the new yoke comes in for my HaD shaft and then replace it when I do the gear swap!


Sent from Canada

Thanks, this gives me a little piece of mind.

Parts are in. Going in on the 16th. Fingers crossed they do it right & don't f*** anything up.

When changing something like a pinion seal, the crush sleeve doesn't have to be replaced unless it's already been re-torqued a time or three.

In order to have proper preload on the pinion gear, then crush sleeve needs to be ever so slightly crushed further when torqueing down the pinion nut... which ever so slightly moves the pinion index. Not a big deal if a pinion seal goes out once and the proper replacement procedure is followed.

The alternative requires removal of the differential to get to the crush sleeve, and resetting your pinion / ring gear alignment, which is all rather time consuming.

You can also find crush sleeve delete kits that replace the sleeve with a solid spacer, and shims to get the alignment perfect. That's a good bit of work, though, and likely not worth the effort.

Solid pinion spacers unfortunately don't exist commercially for the axles under our trucks, I looked into it pretty extensively when I was building my axles recently. Anything would have to be custom machined or adapted from another application. Would be a very nice addition to an axle that was destined for a hard life though.