factory remote start and fuel gauge issues on 2014 Ram

[sydbarringer]

Bought a used 1500 Laramie 5 years ago and this truck has been sweet. Back and forth between NoVA and west Ala several times until COVID. On my most recent trip I rear-ended a small Chevy sedan. They hauled his away but after the tow truck driver pulled my bumper off the tire I drove back to NoVA. Immediately after the crash I noticed the fuel gauge said I was empty. Some posts here indicate the sending unit contacts can get damaged and I can see how that might have happened in my crash. Later I noticed the remote start no longer works properly; it WILL start but only runs for a minute instead of the usual 20 minutes. That was a very convenient feature for us when we had to leave the dog in the truck.

Also, is the fuel level sending unit have a separate fuse, or is it combined with the fuel pump circuit?

TIA

 

[EagleChief]

Bummer about the collision. As for the sending unit - it is attached to the side of the fuel pump. It was a known issue (at least for RAM owners on here) that the sending unit would fail over time. The contact would rub through the material on the sending unit and it would quit working - usually around the 1/2 to 3/4 tank range. In the past, there were replacement parts for the sending unit itself. I think it was around $100, but, I've read/heard that those parts are not available anymore. The other option is to replace the fuel pump. The labor cost is the same for both jobs, since you still have to remove the fuel pump from the tank to get to the sending unit.

Mine had gone out - intermittently at first, then just quit reading any fuel level - at around 100k miles. I went without it for about a year, just using my trip mileage to fill up around 350 miles. Eventually, decided to replace the fuel pump as a whole unit, since I was at the 100k mile point.

As for the remote start, if the truck senses an issue, the remote start will shut off. As your seeing, for example, low/empty fuel. Even if your low fuel light comes on, the remote start will shut off after a few seconds. If you accidentally hit the panic button, you'll get the same result. I'm sure there are some other warnings that could pop up that would keep the remote start from working, but those are the most common.

As for fuses, I'm not sure about that one.