4x4 engagement

[Burla]

Thanks for all the team put and information spent. I just got this truck and unfortunately no owners manual and seems the information on it is hidden deep dark place on the web, lol. I wasn't sure if I had to be sitting still and then place the truck into N and then make the selection, etc. I might also just buy an owners manual .

Thanks
Dan

like doc wagon said, if you search Canada ram 2500 owners manual it will come up as it is law there, same truck as sold in US. free

 

[Jeepwalker]

I'll second it ..The larger owner's manual is the way to go if still avail. Or at least a PDF.

Is the manual included via the touch-screen on newer trucks so-equipped?

 

[turkeybird56]

No

I'll second it ..The larger owner's manual is the way to go if still avail. Or at least a PDF.

Is the manual included via the touch-screen on newer trucks so-equipped?

I have never seen it. But than I got a lowly 2019 Bighorn, maybe the newer Higher trims like the 90K Tungsten has them, LOL. I have never seen manuals on any U Connect readout. There is not even a way to read any files. I know the techno guys could modify the head units, but all I have been able to see them read are like MP4 files on a USB not any PDF's.,

 

[Marshall]

Thanks for all the team put and information spent. I just got this truck and unfortunately no owners manual

I would ask where you bought it and ask wth is my book ,please .
I’m old school and want to read

 

[Rkimbrell]

I wish my Ram had a lever. You pull it back and it's 'in'. Plus it 'feels' cooler! Going to the dial or a dash switch was the beginning of 'nanny-creep'.

I totally agree with you. There was a lot less to go wrong with manual hubs and a lever for 4wd. I miss both.

 

[62Blazer]

I totally agree with you. There was a lot less to go wrong with manual hubs and a lever for 4wd. I miss both.

I agree with you. However you can blame the general public for this. It's not that manufacturers just randomly decided to go to electronic dials and such, that is what the majority of buyers wanted. You are lucky to find an SUV nowadays that even has selectable 4wd. That is because of so many people that have zero clue of how 4wd works, how to shift to 4wd, or when you should use it. Over the years I lost count of how many people in 4wd vehicles get stuck and not know how to shift to 4wd, even if it is simple as turning a dial. A friends wife drove a 4wd SUV for 5-6 years that had a lever to engage 4wd. She got it lightly stuck in a parking lot during the winter and had to get out the owner's manual to figure out 4wd...which was as simple as pulling a lever from 2wd to 4Hi. Saw another person in a 4wd Chevy truck pull off the side of a parking lot in wet grass and couldn't back up onto the pavement again. They tried for 15-20 minutes and finally called a tow truck! (Before judging me, I wasn't in a position to walk over there and show them how to engage 4wd).

 

[Dean2]

@62Blazer - I agree. Have helped out quite a few who were stuck and had no idea how to engage 4x4. They weren't all women either. One I remember was stuck in the Horton's drive through in a 4Runner. Rear tires spinning, going nowhere. Walked over, told him how to select 4x4, he did, wacked the gas so hard he launched right out into the street. Darn good thing there was no one coming down the road.

 

[Docwagon1776]

I don't miss getting out to lock in hubs. If it breaks, I'll fix it, but I've yet to have an automatic hub failure. Jeep, Chevy, Ford, or Ram, vacuum or electric.

 

[Grams]

I’ll give an example of how much better electronic 4WD is: I was pulling an Airstream TT up a steep…VERY Steep mountain road near Zion N.M…. after passing the 9K’ elevation there was sign advising Against trailers beyond that point. This was also about 4 miles up the mountainside on this narrow road.

The Problem: The road had narrowed to 1-1/2 lanes and was well past 5% grade… which coupled with nearing 11K’ altitude …was about all my little 4.7L V8 (2012 Ram 1500) could manage. Coming to a “possible” place to turn-around…. the problem was, having come to a stop to plan the turn-around….. the truck had insufficient engine power to Move at ALL!

The steep-ness of the grade made it dangerous to trust Parking Brake and/or Transmission Park…. to get out to engage hubs. NO WAY would that have been safe while on such a steep grade.
But to get into 4-LOW…. in order to be able to simply MOVE… All I had to do was rotate the knob from 2H to 4L …. Electronic Shift to the RESCUE!

Now I was able to pull-away from being stopped….and about 1/8-mile further up the moujntain, found a very small U-turn available in a private residence on that hillside.

Whew!

(Also, coming down Mingus Mountain Forest-Service Road, the ability to shift electronically into 4-Low allowed my little gas-engine to be used as “engine braking” and safely descend the several miles of steep road.)

(That’s the truck which was wrecked just last Fall in KY…. All those little-engine-that-could woes are gone with a Ram 2500 with 6.7 Cummins)

 

[Dean2]

I likd locking hubs. Soon as I turned off pavement, they got locked. Same in winter time, snow or ice, they got locked and stayed locked. Means I could get 4x4 anytime I wanted. However, the rest of the time I had a truly free wheeling front end that cut down on wear and improved mileage. No rotating half shafts, no parasitic drag from fluid being turned etc. All of the current renditions of hubs do not actually do that. Lots more stuff rotating than there used to be.

 

[62Blazer]

I learned to drive on a 1970's era vehicle with locking hubs....with manual steering, manual brakes, manual transmission. The first truck I bought in the early 1990's had locking hubs. It actually had auto hubs on the front from the factory, but the original axle design was setup for manual hubs. During this period many manufacturers had retrofitted trucks with auto locking hubs. These were kind of an after thought and weren't reliable and often failed. Mine weren't reliable at all and replaced them with manual hubs. My next truck was a late 90's model and also had locking hubs and lever shifter. Probably one of the last factory vehicles to come with actual locking hubs. That was the vehicle I had when starting a real daily job. It wasn't unusual for it to have the hubs locked in for weeks at a time. Since the early 2000's I've owned several other 4wd vehicles and none had any manual style hubs...you just moved the shifter in the cab.
For all the trucks that had manual locking hubs, I was always taught that if there was any chance at all you would need 4wd just go ahead and lock the hubs in. When driving to work in the winter if there was any chance of snow or ice on the roads I just kept the hubs locked in. It was basically like having shift on the fly 4wd, just click the shifter to 4wd if needed. Even if the main roads were cleared maybe the parking lots and stuff had snow where you needed 4wd. In most cases having the hubs locked in caused absolutely no issues and wasn't even noticeable. Think about it, having manual hubs locked in isn't any different than a lot of modern vehicles with no auto locking hubs or axle disconnects.

 

[Grams]

I live in a house built in 1950 by a Lincoln-Mercury dealer as his hunting lodge. It’s all tongue-and-groove wooden wood interior… Walls/ceiling knotted pine, floors pegged-oak, cedar-planked closets, baths tile, great-room with extra-large stone fireplace taking up half of a 40-ft wall next to a gun-rack cabinet full of lever-actions, …. and when I moved in (1980) it had a 3-party-line telephone with a filter so that only my phone would ring if the call was for me, but any stranger in the circuit could pick-up and listen-in.
It was only in 1990 that I was finally able to get a pvt line after the ph co. buried 6-miles of cable to the house from the hwy.

When the soon-to-retire tele ph man installed my pvt line, he laughed and told me this house had a wooden-case, magneto-driven/hand-crank telephone on the wall which he removed as a younger man in 1971.
“Think about it”, he said. “We had Men on the Moon! and this house is so far out from civilization it still had a MAGNETO Phone! The local phone sytem was ALL party-line. The switchboard was run by a Spinster known as Miss Jane, and the system shut down between 9PM and 6AM. If you cranked the handle which rang every-phone-in-this-system, …. it’d better be an EMERGency because a LOT of folks will pick up and LISTEN IN!”

After 2000 I killed the land lines entirely (two pvt lines plus fax) and had it all removed. The wife and I use our cellular smart ph’s and I-Pads for everything, wirelessly connected the WWW network.

And, Thank God I no longer have a truck with manual steering, brakes, windows, 3-speed on the column, and 8-track stereo-radio and my pontoon-boat’s outboard is silent 4-stroke and doesn’t surround you with a cloud of noise and blue smoke!

I Love my modern Ram with Shift-on-the-FLy 4WD and a non-smoky quiet Cummins diesel!

 

[Grams]

I would ask where you bought it and ask wth is my book ,please .
I’m old school and want to read

Yep. When I was signing the sales paperwork and writing a check for $98,300 for a F-ing PickUp Truck …. and saw that Ram wanted another $50 for the Owners Manual….
I told them they’d pay for it and drop-ship it to me.
It’s encyclopedic-huge, and Ram should be ASHAMED to even THINK about asking a DIME from an Owner for the Manual!

 

[Lsujker]

The CAD system in the 2500 is perfectly fine. Hubs are ALWAYS locked. This was used in Wranglers from up to 95 but vacuum operated.

Without a locker, only one front wheel will spin anyway. No matter what your hub situation is.