I just bought a 2012 ram 1500 with the 5.7. It has 139k on it and looking over everything the previous owner took extremely good care of it.
the only maintenance I’m kinda wanting to do is clean the intake valves by spraying crc into the throttle body.
is this a good idea?
also if you have any other items I should take a look at or add to the truck let me know!
edit:
I should probably mention I looked over all the fluids, air filters, suspension, etc. everything is good.
I'm a fan of routine maintenance to prevent unnecessary wear - not so sure about corrective maintenance when wear isn't a likely outcome. But there is probably no harm in running a top end cleaner through.
The transmission really should have its fluid & both filters changed every 60k miles - you said you "looked over" them, do you have information indicating when it was last changed? Transmissions are expensive, a drain and fill is cheap. If you're handy at all they're easy on the RFE and you can get a replacement pan that includes a built in drain plug if you want to keep the truck long term and make future changes easier.
The coolant for 2012 I believe was 5 year hybrid-OAT, don't think they changed to the 10 year OAT until the following year and even if they had you're still about at the end of life on it. Unless you know the coolant has been flushed in the past 5 years it's time to do that again. Drain, fill with distilled, run to operating temp, drain, refill with distilled, run to operating temp, drain again, refill with approved
(specific to the year) coolant in the correct proportion. I believe they changed coolant type from 2012 to 2013 and they are not cross compatible. Concentrate is $25 per gallon and it's a 18 quart system. This matters because the coolant is also a corrosion preventative and neglecting it is how you end up with the joy of replacing heater cores and radiators. Again the fluid is cheaper than the parts you get to replace when the fluid is neglected.
These are fundamentally good machines with very few true Achilles' heels.. all they really need is solid maintenance and sober drivers.