9thousandfeet
Junior Member
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2017
- Posts
- 16
- Reaction score
- 5
- Location
- Rocky Mountains
- Ram Year
- 2018
- Engine
- 6.4 Hemi
Still waiting for delivery of our new truck - maybe sometime this week according to the status reports. Woohoo!
What I want to find out is what adjustments dealer service departments can make to vehicle settings that owners cannot normally access, and which won't appear in the Owner's Manual.
As an example of what I mean, using my Subaru Outback as an example, the MPG computer on the vehicle has a default setting from the factory that's routinely high—it will tell you you're getting 32 mpg when you're really getting 29, say—and there is no access for the vehicle owner to do anything about it.
However the dealership can hook the car to their SSM and adjust the setting up or down in 1% increments and render it pretty accurate.
There are many other such settings which are dealer-only accessible.
My experience has been that service managers themselves often are not aware of all the settings that can be tweaked by dealer equipment ( the full Factory Service Manual is a huge document, and I doubt many service managers or techs have even read the whole thing never mind remembered all of it), and their response to requests, if they don't know and have not previously come across the feature, is often to just blow you off with "no, we can't adjust that".
I've literally had that happen dozens of times with Subaru and Toyota, but this is my first dance with a new Chrysler vehicle, so I don't have the lay of the land figured out yet.
I assume that a full Factory Service Manual would contain this information but I have not yet been able to find one online for the 2018 3500, either free or for a fee.
Is there a link to access the FSM for a 2018 3500?
Anyone have any other ideas about how to find, or make, a list of which settings are dealer-adjustable?
Right now my particular interest is to find out if there is a setting to adjust the "always hot" power wire in the 7 pin trailer harness so that it would only be hot if the ignition is in ACC or RUN, so if anyone knows anything about that, that would be great. There is no owner-accessible setting for that, and I don't know if such a setting exists or not, but it would not surprise me if it did, nor would it surprise me if the service manager at my local dealership didn't know about it.
What I want to find out is what adjustments dealer service departments can make to vehicle settings that owners cannot normally access, and which won't appear in the Owner's Manual.
As an example of what I mean, using my Subaru Outback as an example, the MPG computer on the vehicle has a default setting from the factory that's routinely high—it will tell you you're getting 32 mpg when you're really getting 29, say—and there is no access for the vehicle owner to do anything about it.
However the dealership can hook the car to their SSM and adjust the setting up or down in 1% increments and render it pretty accurate.
There are many other such settings which are dealer-only accessible.
My experience has been that service managers themselves often are not aware of all the settings that can be tweaked by dealer equipment ( the full Factory Service Manual is a huge document, and I doubt many service managers or techs have even read the whole thing never mind remembered all of it), and their response to requests, if they don't know and have not previously come across the feature, is often to just blow you off with "no, we can't adjust that".
I've literally had that happen dozens of times with Subaru and Toyota, but this is my first dance with a new Chrysler vehicle, so I don't have the lay of the land figured out yet.
I assume that a full Factory Service Manual would contain this information but I have not yet been able to find one online for the 2018 3500, either free or for a fee.
Is there a link to access the FSM for a 2018 3500?
Anyone have any other ideas about how to find, or make, a list of which settings are dealer-adjustable?
Right now my particular interest is to find out if there is a setting to adjust the "always hot" power wire in the 7 pin trailer harness so that it would only be hot if the ignition is in ACC or RUN, so if anyone knows anything about that, that would be great. There is no owner-accessible setting for that, and I don't know if such a setting exists or not, but it would not surprise me if it did, nor would it surprise me if the service manager at my local dealership didn't know about it.
