BlackWidow
Member
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2014
- Posts
- 80
- Reaction score
- 28
- Ram Year
- 2014 Ram
- Engine
- 6.4
Admittedly this post is part question, part rant.
From what I've heard and read, transmissions seem to be the Achilles heal on Ram trucks and maybe mostly centered around cheap clutches used in their transmissions (or so I'm told by my buddy who was researching trans issues after we developed problems with our truck).
That said, out of the blue we started having issues with the transmission on my wife's '14 Ram 2500 CC with the 6.4L gas motor and 66RFE transmission with no more than 67k miles. It didn't want to upshift and was throwing a variety of transmission codes. Initially we thought it might be related to the thermostat since we've been having issues with that since December. I'll be candid, the truck has had an easy life. It's not pulled a trailer (yet), only hauls (in the bed) a mild load once a year when we're loaded up for our family road trips. We've taken it off road a few times, but nothing too hardcore, a few forest roads here or there with the most difficult trail being Imogene Pass in Colorado, but none of that has been within the last twelve months. We did do a trans service last summer using all mopar filters, fluids and even the sealant for the transmission pan.
About a month ago she was driving the truck when it wouldn't go over 40mph and started slowing down and and red lining when trying to accelerate. We had it towed to a nearby dealer who didn't seem want to do any real diagnosis, just chalked it up to being a modified truck (3" lift & 37's) with big tires and kept throwing around about voiding any warranty on power train. They said in order to determine the problem they needed to do a tear down of the transmission ($500) to determine what the failure was. Since they seemed to put all the blame on the big tires without any real diagnosis and not feeling as if we were going to get a fair shake I pretty much said f-u and pulled our truck from that dealer and drove it home (they're only a few blocks away). This situation pretty much exemplifies why I dislike them and do what I can to avoid having our vehicles serviced by them.
About two weeks later I had it towed to our preferred dealer who actually gave us a fair shake. Not automatically laying blame on the lift or big tires and actually put the the time into diagnosing what the issue was. I still had to commit to a tear down ($500, not charged if covered by warranty) which I was fine with and was willing to accept the responsibility if it was determined the transmission failure was something related to what we did on the truck. Well this week I got the call that when they dropped the pad they found some metal shavings and saw that the valve body was cracked. Not knowing a much about anything about transmission issues, I'm left wondering how the heck the valve body could have cracked. Thankfully I'm being told the issue is going to be covered under warranty however my question is, "Has anyone else had a cracked valve body on their 66RFE transmission?"
Thanks for reading and let me know if you've had an issue like us.
Kevin
From what I've heard and read, transmissions seem to be the Achilles heal on Ram trucks and maybe mostly centered around cheap clutches used in their transmissions (or so I'm told by my buddy who was researching trans issues after we developed problems with our truck).
That said, out of the blue we started having issues with the transmission on my wife's '14 Ram 2500 CC with the 6.4L gas motor and 66RFE transmission with no more than 67k miles. It didn't want to upshift and was throwing a variety of transmission codes. Initially we thought it might be related to the thermostat since we've been having issues with that since December. I'll be candid, the truck has had an easy life. It's not pulled a trailer (yet), only hauls (in the bed) a mild load once a year when we're loaded up for our family road trips. We've taken it off road a few times, but nothing too hardcore, a few forest roads here or there with the most difficult trail being Imogene Pass in Colorado, but none of that has been within the last twelve months. We did do a trans service last summer using all mopar filters, fluids and even the sealant for the transmission pan.
About a month ago she was driving the truck when it wouldn't go over 40mph and started slowing down and and red lining when trying to accelerate. We had it towed to a nearby dealer who didn't seem want to do any real diagnosis, just chalked it up to being a modified truck (3" lift & 37's) with big tires and kept throwing around about voiding any warranty on power train. They said in order to determine the problem they needed to do a tear down of the transmission ($500) to determine what the failure was. Since they seemed to put all the blame on the big tires without any real diagnosis and not feeling as if we were going to get a fair shake I pretty much said f-u and pulled our truck from that dealer and drove it home (they're only a few blocks away). This situation pretty much exemplifies why I dislike them and do what I can to avoid having our vehicles serviced by them.
About two weeks later I had it towed to our preferred dealer who actually gave us a fair shake. Not automatically laying blame on the lift or big tires and actually put the the time into diagnosing what the issue was. I still had to commit to a tear down ($500, not charged if covered by warranty) which I was fine with and was willing to accept the responsibility if it was determined the transmission failure was something related to what we did on the truck. Well this week I got the call that when they dropped the pad they found some metal shavings and saw that the valve body was cracked. Not knowing a much about anything about transmission issues, I'm left wondering how the heck the valve body could have cracked. Thankfully I'm being told the issue is going to be covered under warranty however my question is, "Has anyone else had a cracked valve body on their 66RFE transmission?"
Thanks for reading and let me know if you've had an issue like us.
Kevin
