Casting sand vs actuator in ram 2500 ram

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EastWestHemi

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in the other thread—

“looking to move to 3/4 ton any advice helpful”​


I stated that my drivers side heat was faltering, let’s say that the heat was still there but the flow was 1/4 of what was coming out the passenger side vents. After gathering all the flushing equipment for the heater core— I took a look at the first actuator behind the glove box and found it was still working. Shining my flashlight behind the auxiliary switches in the space below the radio I could see the third actuator under the steering wheel clearly, and its white arm was moving when I toggled between the heat and air conditioning. It was harder to see the middle actuator but I found it with the flashlight— and it’s dead, the arm is not moving when I go from heat to cooling. There was no noise or clicking, ever. I have a tradesman that does not have dual climate.

What gave me second thoughts about the plugged heater core was I was also not getting very much from the rear center vents, but it’s not cold, just minimal heat flow.

I’ll be tackling the project sometime in the next two weeks, looks like all the actuators are the same part, around $50 online mopar, I’m guessing probably $60-70 at the local dealership. I’ll replace the middle actuator to see if it solves the problem.

Since I bought the $22 heater core purge hose attachment from AutoZone I may purge the core anyway to be preemptive, see what comes out. Thinking that I might drop the radiator fluid a couple times while I’m at it to refresh the system again. My overflow tank doesn’t have visible sediment in it, but where the two hoses come into the tank it looks like black staining where they drop into the coolant reservoir. I’m hesitant to pull the block plugs because I don’t have a pressurized system to purge all the air and on my last Jeep hemi 5.7 I could only access the passenger side plug— which I did pull once and don’t think I refilled correctly because the water pump purge plug was stripped solid, when I pulled the heads it looks like I had an air lock in the rear cylinder coolant channel, it was cooked orange HOAT. I thought I could get away with burping the system and raising the front of the vehicle, but seems it didn’t work. I’m more hesitant to pull the block plugs on the 6.4 since it doesn’t even have a radiator cap like the 5.7.

If I really wanted to address a total fluid exchange I suppose I could buy 15-20 gallons of distilled water and fill the radiator multiple times, cycle the truck until clear and then measure what comes out of the radiator and add concentrate ms-12106 to a 50/50.

I haven’t looked, but I don’t suppose the water pump has the purge plug like the 5.7’s. That 5.7 in the Jeep was pretty cool, but fitting such a big engine between the rails gave no access the the drivers side block plug.

I’ll take a few picture, cross my fingers I don’t break plastic parts pulling them off to access the middle actuator.

The truck 2016 2500 6.4, 81k miles, is coming up on 9 years in august, I’m sure it was built in 2015 so the actuator lasted between 9-10 years. I’m not upset, I saw the chick pull one of them apart on YouTube and all the guts are plastic. 9 year old plastic is understandable. They don’t engineer the little gizmos and gadgets in cars to last that long, they hope we will just get fed up with the nickel and dime repairs and get rid of them. The last completely plastic part failure I addressed was a multiple VW door locking mechanism that lasted a decade on my wife vehicle, pulled it out and all gears and crap are brittle plastic.

Crazy, to manufacture a metal toothed gear in the actuator it probably costs $1.50 while the plastic gear costs $0.75. I have three actuators in my truck, I’m willing to pay another $3 per truck to get metal gizmos vs plastic ones.

FYI, Ram, build a truck that uses high quality gizmos and gadgets that last 15+ years, reliability goes up and you will sell more overall by taking market share. Instead, you pander and stock your vehicle with more and more features that require parts that wear out between 3-10 years— conveniently out of warranty. End rant.
 
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jr27236

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Glad you found your issue. There is another thread that someone had just started describing the same thing and when I suggested the blend door I got shot down as people were saying the casting issue was more prevalent in the newer trucks. Since yours is a 16 it doesn't fall into that anyhow. I recently flushed my 16 before it got totalled and the fluid looked NO different from the new but since I was keeping it I changed it out as much as I could. Good luck with the repair. Post you progress and results as it will help a lot of people on here in sure
 

nlambert182

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There is always very little flow coming from the rear vents. The air has to travel too far. I explained in that thread what I believe (and many others) to be the issue.

I'm still not convinced that the blend door is your issue, primarily because by 2016 blend door actuator problems were mostly solved. Heater core problems unfortunately were not. The casting issue WAS still an issue in 2016. Very easy to search the forums.

OP - good luck with it. Maybe you'll get lucky and have that solve your problem. Let us know either way.
 
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jr27236

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There is always very little flow coming from the rear vents. The air has to travel too far. I explained in that thread what I believe (and many others) to be the issue.

I'm still not convinced that the blend door is your issue, primarily because by 2016 blend door actuator problems were mostly solved. Heater core problems unfortunately were not. The casting issue WAS still an issue in 2016. Very easy to search the forums.

OP - good luck with it. Maybe you'll get lucky and have that solve your problem. Let us know either way.
He has two fairly simple things to check to determine his issue, (i said check not fix LOL)
 
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