2014 2500 Ram 6.7 going on 4th trans in 5 months? Dealer now tells me its tires?

Where do I begin? This will be long, but i'm looking for ammunition to go at the dealer with. I own a 2014/2500/6.7/68RFE trans with 62000 miles. The original issue was in March,19. While towing my 7k lb dry weight 5th wheel i noticed the truck shifting hard while on the freeway. When trying to back the trailer into the yard the truck did not want to go into reverse. I made an appointment with the dealer for Thursday (incident was Monday). I had already made an appointment for Wednesday to install new tires and rims with Discount Tire. I limped the truck to install the new tires, then dropped the truck off with the dealer the next day to troubleshoot. They determined the trans failed (debris in the oil), replaced the trans after 45 days. That lasted for about 2 months.
I began to notice after a couple months of city driving (never towing anything) a chirp when going from 3-4 gear around 35 mph. Then while backing out of a parking spot, putting it in drive, applying gas, and rolling roughly 30' the truck slipped out of first gear, rpm's spiked, trucked then grabbed first gear very violent, and the check engine light comes on. I pulled the code and it was P0731, High first gear ratio. The dealer inspected, found debris, and changed the transmission.
Within days I started to hear the 3-4 gear chirp at roughly 35 mph. Then two weeks after install while backing out of my driveway the exact same thing happened as before. Shifted from reverse to drive, truck lost first gear, rpm spiked, trucked grabbed first violently, check engine light came on. I put the truck back into reverse and backed into my driveway, pulled the code, and received the same P0731 high first gear ratio. I called the dealer, and took it right back.
Now after two weeks of inspection, and a "STAR" (Engineering request for support with Chrysler) request made for support. The engineers have told me to "pick up the truck, and return the tires to factory spec"? Are you kidding me? I just left the dealership and reminded them that this entire problem began prior to the new tires being installed. I also told them that I still have the original tires. I just drove home with the truck, picked up the old tires, and delivered them to the dealer. They're going to install the tires, drive it for a few days, and tell me if anything duplicates.
I can't believe a tire upgrade to 35" Nitto tires is the cause? Not buying it. I've opened a case that was approved this morning with the National Center for Dispute Settlement. At this point i'm hoping the lemon the damn thing. Any advice is appreciated at this point. Thanks for taking the time to read this and support.

You should remind them that 285/60/20 is a factory tire size which is a 33.4" tire. They're full $hit if they think a tire change caused this, even if you where running 37s.
My buddy tows a 16K lbs fiver with his '14 CTD 2500 and has the 285/60/20 tires. If anything was going to tear up a trans it would be towing heavy, he just broke 100K with no trans issues.

They're claiming that the tire size increase to a 285/75/R18 without tuning the truck will cause this to happen. I called they're BS by asking about the larger tires offered on their trucks, and they replied they tune them to accept the tire size. I asked why they don't tune mine, and the reply was that engineering told them not to, and for me to go back to the original tire size.

I refuse to believe this is whats causing the issue. This is simply the one thing they can point to that's not stock. Never mind the fact the problem began prior to the tire purchase.

Yeah. They’re jerking you around. You don't have a tire issue. We would all have bad transmissions by now lol. Something is obviously wrong somewhere. Or just bad luck you got 3 bad transmissions in a row. Rare but I guess could happen. We had it happen to us in Afghan with a helicopter. Pulled one. Put new trans was bad. We had. Line of 4 bad transmissions sat on the floor. Granted it’s a little different but it could happen. I’d let them throw stocks back on and replace trans.

sounds to me like you have a bunch of crap stuck in the transmission cooler. i bet they haven't gotten all the old fluid from the original transmission out of the cooler and once the fluid heats up enough to open the bypass valve you get a flood of debris into the new transmission.

Are they rebuilding them or are they factory replacements? When mine went on my last diesel they rebuilt it at the dealer.originally blew at 60k and was still fine at 260k. Maybe they just need a better tech doing the work. I had 305/60-20 on that truck pretty much from day1.

Probably rebuild (or new)with the old tq conv full of ****.

Any time you have a trans go out from debris, at the very minimum you need to flush and clean all lines involved. After 2 of them in short succession, you pretty much have to replace all lines and coolers involved. Sometimes this means the radiator too. If the dealer isn't doing this, then they're actually CAUSING the problems at this point.

You want ammunition against the dealership? Your truck, and transmission are rated to hook up to a 17,000 pound trailer, and pull it across the state if you desired. I don't know what size tires you would need to simulate that type of strain on a transmission, but they would be MUCH bigger than what you have.

My vote is with everyone else. You have parts changers trying to fix your truck instead of mechanics, so the same debris is killing anything they install.

You guys are all echoing my thoughts exactly. I asked the shop foreman if they're flushing the system, and he claims Chrysler makes them hook up the machine to flush the cooler prior to installing the "new/rebuilt" transmission. They are not rebuilding the trans at the dealership. That's part of the reason it's taken an average of 30 days to repair. I completely agree that i'm dealing with part swappers. Unfortunately when they reached out to Chrysler this was the engineers direction. I expected this to have been a question with the first trans. Not the 3rd failure. When I originally dropped it off back in March I told the manager I just had the tires installed the day prior. No questions or issues then. Now they conveniently forget that? As of now they're installing the OE tires, and the foreman will drive the truck for a few days while i'm out of town. I hope he see's something by the time I get back.

Time to take all the paper work and go to a different dealer. It’s going to keep eating parts until they properly repair all the damaged parts. And three transmissions later clearly they are not going to.

Tomorrow I meet with the arbitrator. As of now Chrysler is sticking to their story stating the tires are the issue. I've had the factory tires installed for the last 3 weeks. They installed a flight recorder for me to push anytime I had an issue. Needless to say the button was pushed a dozen or so times with either hard shifts, or blatant gear slippage. It'll drive like a manual at times. Their story is this "It is a well known fact that tires of a different size cannot be installed on a production vehicle. The transmission is calibrated based on a specified tire size. The correct tire size must be used because the powertrain controller/calibration uses wheel/axle speed to calculate vehicle velocity which is a critical input for transmission shift quality. If the tire size is changed, the vehicle velocity changes which can dramatically affect the functionality of the transmission. The increased size causes the tires to rotate slower to cover the same amount of ground. In this case, the customer was informed that the wrong-sized tires were installed on the vehicle". They now claim that since the tires have been returned to stock condition no problems have been found. This is not true. I feel like they simply pointed to the one item that was aftermarket, and are running with that even though this entire issue started prior to the new tires being installed.

Thoughts? Thanks

Bahaha. Aftermarket tires. Then the shops should be flooded with bad trucks. Lame

Yeah... time to find a different dealer!

wowsers... @Whittsram after reading that BS explanation from the dealer about a tire size different from stock causing the problem...that person was born last night and exited the **** cavity.
How many hundreds of thousands of trucks from all manufacturers have oversized tires on them with no issues.

FCA is saying you broke your tranny and were not gonna fix it anymore.. Welcome to the FCA paper warranty.

What total bs! I'm losing a lot of respect for FCA lately. The drag link recall bs weld fix, now stories like this. Go to a different dealer... see what they say.

Clearly the first dealer doesn't have real techs who can designose things without a computer....as is sadly the case more often than not these days.

After 3 transmissions, as said, clearly there is a component failure in the trans cooler components, somewhere that's dumping debris into the atf and wasting all those transmissions..... good luck.

GsRAM said:

What total bs! I'm losing a lot of respect for FCA lately. The drag link recall bs weld fix, now stories like this.

Click to expand...

This crap with dealers has been going on since I bought my first new car back in 1972. And I'm sure long before that. Now, as far as the drag link repair, that is beyond ridiculous and I'm not sure what to do about it.

I have 35 nitto ridge grapplers on my truck for the last 12k miles and it shifts the same as it left the factory. I'd go get a lawyer and try to claim lemon law on the truck. Or at least threaten it until Chrysler decides to fix it right

If they're flushing the cooler it's gotta be the thermostat.
Do you monitor the temperature?