Power Wagon Registry

So I drove from Moab, UT to Apple Valley, CA yesterday to pick up my sliders. And back to Moab, UT today.

First, problem that happened today. I get to St. George, UT and stopped at a Love's to fill up. After filling up, I get in the truck, start it up and notice I now have a check engine light and the shift selector indicator "PRND" are all in yellow. WTF. The shifter kind of jumps around too.

Start stop, still doing it. Don't have my scan gauge with me, so - so I stop in Cedar City, UT up the road and decide to unplug the battery for 20 mins.

The problem doesn't return.

Second problem almost back to Moab, getting dark, turn on my lights and then suddenly notice the locker indicator is flashing all the lights and the sway bar disconnect. How long that had been going on, I have no idea.

No issues yesterday. Only recent change is the new Toyo tires. I am at 34K now and just put nearly 1250 miles on in two days. We did some heavy wheeling last weekend, but no problems during the week. My only thought is that today exsbrated something. And I imagine since I'm past 32K and both tow and wheel, I probably need to change the diff fluid ASAP like this weekend.

Anyone run into this before? What else do I need to look into? Also, WTF was with the yellow shift indicator..

Odd electrical stuff, thats for sure.

I havnt owned my truck long enough to notice... What color are the shift indicators normally?

Hard to say, but you may have mashed and shorted some wiring under the truck while you were wheeling.

I don't think I would be too worried about changing the diff fluid yet. I used to run some Cummins trucks commercially towing and did 50k changes. Never lost an 11.5 rear end in a Ram but did have to rebuild the Ford Sterling rear twice for noise, every 100k miles. I did run Amsoil Severe Gear in them, changing out the original fluid at 1000 miles. I would keep an eye on t-case fluid though, lots of 4wd use is hard on it.

A little googling about the yellow trans display only came up with one hit and it was on a truck with an Aisin trans.

They traced the problem to the I255 harness plug that is the big one that is just under the drivers side floor board that TransEngineer has been saying all along. They found that the plastic snap clip that holds pin # 21 in place was broke therefore letting the pin move back out of contact with the other half of the connection. pin 21 was for circuit T42 which happens to be the one that was saying open when they were doing the switch open/closed test for the range selector. They moved the wires from pin 21 to the empty pin 19 spot. Good call TransEngineer. Now if only that dealer that I was at on holidays had checked that connector, they may have seen a pin that wasn't out flush with the rest!!!!
Hope that's the end of this problem!!!!

Link to thread if you want to read it.

http://www.turbodieselregister.com/thre ... ion-sensor

Good luck.

That yellow display was the truck thinking you started in some other trans position besides park. Not sure if that's even possible, but it kind of makes sense after reading your post about the floppy shifter and that thread I linked.

Check for damage under there and also see if those 37's are hitting the wheel well liner where that connection is said to be behind.

Snowsled wrote:I don't think I would be too worried about changing the diff fluid yet. I used to run some Cummins trucks commercially towing and did 50k changes. Never lost an 11.5 rear end in a Ram but did have to rebuild the Ford Sterling rear twice for noise, every 100k miles. I did run Amsoil Severe Gear in them, changing out the original fluid at 1000 miles. I would keep an eye on t-case fluid though, lots of 4wd use is hard on it.

Doesn't the owners manual tell you to change the diff fluid every 15,000 miles? I've only got 35k miles on my truck and I've had the fluid changed twice.

Yea I read that thread linked yesterday.

04Ram2500Hemi wrote: Doesn't the owners manual tell you to change the diff fluid every 15,000 miles? I've only got 35k miles on my truck and I've had the fluid changed twice.

On my older 5.7 1500 it was every 18k. On my 2015 it says 32k and 64k are the service intervals to inspect and change if heavy trailering or off-road.

Fluid is cheap, compared to an axle or rebuild. For some reason Dodge/Ram AAM axles seem to sheer the oil between 10-15,000 miles, even Royal Purple & Mobil 1. I have added a qt of Lucas Lube to mine when doing a drain & fill & cleaning the magnets. That seems to make it last 25k or more. My trucks (all 3 Dodge's) have never had an axle problem. I overfill them on purpose, so the pinion bearings stay lubed. Every single "dodge axle failure" I have looked into, that was covered under warranty, came back with the same quote from dodge---"pinion bearing failure due to lack of lubrication". So, my questions are: if the truck was bought new, checked & serviced before delivery, how can the pinion bearings fail, if no one messed with the diff & there are no leaks ??? I think they are under filled on purpose. What other explanation can there be for 438,000 hits in 0.49 seconds when you google "dodge axle failures" ???. I did a lot of research & talked to a lot of people on different forums before i bought my first dodge.

I just changed the rear this morning. Holy shizzle was that black oil. I still need to do the front and still need to check all the connectors and hit them with electrical cleaner. Just ended up wasting half my day on the sliders.

The locker isn't blinking now, but it was this morning. So that's good.

Figures, it happened right after I left....

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Updates: I just pulled two codes off the truck.

P0480 & P0481 - a couple different searches come up related to cooling fan. But I also saw one that said VSS...

But this could be interesting. About two other times, after intense wheeling our engine fan has just sounded, really loud and obnoxious. But I had not observed any high temps.

My '12s manual says to inspect and change if heavy use at the third maintenance interval, now that I see that I probably should check and change mine. I don't remember seeing that when I did my third change, so mine still has the factory fluid at 31k! Yikes!

waldo wrote: Check for damage under there and also see if those 37's are hitting the wheel well liner where that connection is said to be behind.

He has 35's.

MikeKey wrote:Updates: I just pulled two codes off the truck.

P0480 & P0481 - a couple different searches come up related to cooling fan. But I also saw one that said VSS...

But this could be interesting. About two other times, after intense wheeling our engine fan has just sounded, really loud and obnoxious. But I had not observed any high temps.

"Really loud" is normal as the PW fan clutch engages at a lower temp. The reason it sounds loud is due to a large amount of air being pulled through the radiator. Mine does that, it's the original unit. It's when the fan seems quiet and the temps rise, then there's a problem.

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MikeKey wrote:Updates: I just pulled two codes off the truck.

P0480 & P0481 - a couple different searches come up related to cooling fan. But I also saw one that said VSS...

But this could be interesting. About two other times, after intense wheeling our engine fan has just sounded, really loud and obnoxious. But I had not observed any high temps.

An easy way to tell if the fan clutch is bad is shut-off the engine and see if the fan keeps spinning, it should stop almost immediately, if not it's shot.

Well the fan stopped. I cleared the codes and they haven't returned yet. But yesterday, I noticed the flipping Locker/Sway bar switch all light up and blinking again. WTF!

Don't tell me that they are still skimping on a 2¢ cavity plug in the smartbar connection....

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I'm getting under there this weekend. Not only am I doing this, but I've got electrical cleaner and electrical grease for the connectors. Let's hope this ends this.

Problem still hasn't gone away. I noticed my smart bar doesn't engage when I press the button. So now I think I'm totally screwed and the lockers aren't engaging either. Does anyone have any other advice before I drag this thing to a stealership?

Also it kind of moves, I wonder if it's unlocked somehow and never re-engaged...

Sorry to hear of your troubles, perhaps unplugging the swaybar and cleaning/greasing the connector and housing might help if you haven't already done so? Good luck man

Well, not to sound like a total moron, but I can't figure out how to unplug the damn thing...

There's a lever lock on it, it pulls up and folds back, then it comes straight apart.

I noticed a zip tie on mine. Unplugged, cleaned, greased, plugged back in. No blinking lights yet. But the smart bar won't engage. I push the button and nothing. And I'm under the impression that I can't engage the lockers without first engaging this stupid bar.

Looks like I have to go to the stealership after all.

MikeKey wrote:I noticed a zip tie on mine. Unplugged, cleaned, greased, plugged back in. No blinking lights yet. But the smart bar won't engage. I push the button and nothing. And I'm under the impression that I can't engage the lockers without first engaging this stupid bar.

Looks like I have to go to the stealership after all.

I use my lockers all the time, I've never used the smart bar. Shouldn't matter unless you have something else going on.