My 2004 Dodge Ram 3500

[Bigwooly]

I just bought my 1st diesel truck. I have had 3 different Chevrolet S10's over my time driving and put lots of miles on them. All thanks to taking care of regular maintenance on them.

I am pretty satisfied with my purchase so far. Although I have only had it for 3 days and have yet to put it to work.

It came with a folder with receipts for maintenance and all of the work that was done over the years to the truck.

Some back story;

I was laid off, my last working day was August 3rd. We (me, wife, two kids, and two cats)sold both of our homes, bought a 33 ft Travel Trailer, and bought this truck to pull it. We are relocating to Denver, CO from Savannah, GA. Currently neither of us have a job in CO but I am getting some compensation from getting laid off through October 27th. We are headed west leaving this Friday.

I have only come across one concern with this truck. When I purchased it I asked the seller "How big of a lift is on the truck?" He said there's no lift that's factory height. I took him at his word and thought well maybe I've just never been close to a 3500 before. When I was going through the receipts, I found a receipt for the install of a 2" leveling kit (and thankfully all the other pieces to do it RIGHT!). So my question is will I have a problem with the load of my TT sagging the rear and getting my truck nose up under load?

Thanks to anyone who reads this whole thing!! Pictures for attention and a little bit of showing off.

 

[RoadRamblerNJ]

Good luck on your trip. Nice lookin' rig. Long sumbich ain't it. Mine's the same but 6.4 gas motor. Sorry, can't speak from experience on the leveling kit. Others here will.

 

[crash68]

Good looking truck, just wait till you get that CTD climbing in the mountains. It's a lot different experience pulling with a diesel.
You didn't mention if the trailer was a fiver or tag along. With a tag along there won't be enough weight to really get the truck to squat much and the WDH will help level the truck back out. Most Class IV receivers are rated for 1400 tongue/14000 trailer weight max when used with a WDH(1000 tongue/10000 trailer without).
If your trailer is a fiver, you may want to consider pulling the 2" level kit out as you'll have a considerable pin weight that will most likely cause the nose of the truck to be pointed upwards with that 2" level kit.

 

[22hemi13]

Good looking truck, just wait till you get that CTD climbing in the mountains. It's a lot different experience pulling with a diesel.
You didn't mention if the trailer was a fiver or tag along. With a tag along there won't be enough weight to really get the truck to squat much and the WDH will help level the truck back out. Most Class IV receivers are rated for 1400 tongue/14000 trailer weight max when used with a WDH(1000 tongue/10000 trailer without).
If your trailer is a fiver, you may want to consider pulling the 2" level kit out as you'll have a considerable pin weight that will most likely cause the nose of the truck to be pointed upwards with that 2" level kit.

Or throw on some rear bags and keep the stance as it is.

 

[Bigwooly]

You didn't mention if the trailer was a fiver or tag along. With a tag along there won't be enough weight to really get the truck to squat much and the WDH will help level the truck back out. Most Class IV receivers are rated for 1400 tongue/14000 trailer weight max when used with a WDH(1000 tongue/10000 trailer without).

This is the answer I was hoping for!!! It's a "bumper pull" dry weight is 6325 lbs on the trailer and I think the gvwr is 8000 lbs. I go Wednesday morning at 8:30 am for the camper dealer to put on my new brake controller, WDH, and trailer sway bar. They are supposed to set it up and show me how to hook and un-hook.

This truck by the has been meticulously maintained and is CLEAN. Not like polished **** clean just plain taken care of and not beat stupid clean. Thanks for the well wishes on my journey.

 

[Bigwooly]

Or throw on some rear bags and keep the stance as it is.

Are rear bags something I can do myself in the driveway?

 

[crash68]

This is the answer I was hoping for!!! It's a "bumper pull" dry weight is 6325 lbs on the trailer and I think the gvwr is 8000 lbs. I go Wednesday morning at 8:30 am for the camper dealer to put on my new brake controller, WDH, and trailer sway bar. They are supposed to set it up and show me how to hook and un-hook.

You may want to check the dealer's set up of the WDH at a set of truck scales. There have been a few reports on this forum alone of WDH not set up correctly from the dealer and it may need to be adjusted once the truck/trailer is fully loaded.

 

[Bigwooly]

You may want to check the dealer's set up of the WDH at a set of truck scales. There have been a few reports on this forum alone of WDH not set up correctly from the dealer and it may need to be adjusted once the truck/trailer is fully loaded.

There are a set of CAT scales at the Love's truck stop right by the Camper Dealership. I was already planning to get a dry weight weigh and a loaded one to make sure we don't overload the camper. I am guessing that this will have all the info I need on it?

 

[22hemi13]

Are rear bags something I can do myself in the driveway?

Yes. They seem pretty straight forward. I haven’t done but lots of others have

 

[crash68]

There are a set of CAT scales at the Love's truck stop right by the Camper Dealership. I was already planning to get a dry weight weigh and a loaded one to make sure we don't overload the camper. I am guessing that this will have all the info I need on it?

The big concern with using a WDH is to put the weight back on the front axle when a trailer is attached. You can check the set up by rolling over the scales with the WDH engaged and then again without the load bars engaged.
Check out some of the posts by VernDiesel on this forum. Granted he does a lot of towing with a 1500 EcoDiesel(he's well over 400K with his '14), but the principles of setting up a WDH are the same for all.
Here is one of his post:
https://www.ramforum.com/threads/looking-at-the-numbers.123099/

 

[SYKRAMMAN]

I just bought my 1st diesel truck. I have had 3 different Chevrolet S10's over my time driving and put lots of miles on them. All thanks to taking care of regular maintenance on them.

I am pretty satisfied with my purchase so far. Although I have only had it for 3 days and have yet to put it to work.

It came with a folder with receipts for maintenance and all of the work that was done over the years to the truck.

Some back story;

I was laid off, my last working day was August 3rd. We (me, wife, two kids, and two cats)sold both of our homes, bought a 33 ft Travel Trailer, and bought this truck to pull it. We are relocating to Denver, CO from Savannah, GA. Currently neither of us have a job in CO but I am getting some compensation from getting laid off through October 27th. We are headed west leaving this Friday.

I have only come across one concern with this truck. When I purchased it I asked the seller "How big of a lift is on the truck?" He said there's no lift that's factory height. I took him at his word and thought well maybe I've just never been close to a 3500 before. When I was going through the receipts, I found a receipt for the install of a 2" leveling kit (and thankfully all the other pieces to do it RIGHT!). So my question is will I have a problem with the load of my TT sagging the rear and getting my truck nose up under load?

Thanks to anyone who reads this whole thing!! Pictures for attention and a little bit of showing off. View attachment 139313

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Sounds/looks like you found a decent truck, very hard to find those that aren’t beat to crap. Hope everything went well on your journey. Let us know how it’s going.

 

[Bigwooly]

We made it to Colorado! The Penske is unloaded into storage. This Ram got us here and has already pulled our camper up to Estes Park, CO @ 7522 ft.

We had a check engine light come on about halfway through the cross country trip. I took it to an O'Reilly and they read the code it was P0868, Transmission Fluid Pressure low. When I got off the interstate after noticing the light the truck felt like it had no power. We checked fluids hot there in the lot and they were right where they should be. When we left O'Reilly everything was normal. I had zero other issues the entire trip and the next day the check engine light went off while driving our next leg of the trip.

My google attempts on this check engine light turned up a lot of folks describing an intermittent issue with this same code. Sounds like I need to change a sensor and a solenoid.

In the receipts that came with the truck there's one showing that the Trans fluid and filter were changed back in March of this year. I didn't see mileage noted on there. I am going to pull the receipt and check again.

Tomorrow we will be finishing moving into our camper and taking probably 200-300 pounds of stuff out of the camper and putting it into storage. Friday I will be putting the truck trough some more mountain work. We are going through Rocky Mountain National Park and over to the west side of the state.

I can tell you one thing I've learned on this trip. I love this truck.

 

[SYKRAMMAN]

We made it to Colorado! The Penske is unloaded into storage. This Ram got us here and has already pulled our camper up to Estes Park, CO @ 7522 ft.

We had a check engine light come on about halfway through the cross country trip. I took it to an O'Reilly and they read the code it was P0868, Transmission Fluid Pressure low. When I got off the interstate after noticing the light the truck felt like it had no power. We checked fluids hot there in the lot and they were right where they should be. When we left O'Reilly everything was normal. I had zero other issues the entire trip and the next day the check engine light went off while driving our next leg of the trip.

My google attempts on this check engine light turned up a lot of folks describing an intermittent issue with this same code. Sounds like I need to change a sensor and a solenoid.

In the receipts that came with the truck there's one showing that the Trans fluid and filter were changed back in March of this year. I didn't see mileage noted on there. I am going to pull the receipt and check again.

Tomorrow we will be finishing moving into our camper and taking probably 200-300 pounds of stuff out of the camper and putting it into storage. Friday I will be putting the truck trough some more mountain work. We are going through Rocky Mountain National Park and over to the west side of the state.

I can tell you one thing I've learned on this trip. I love this truck.

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Very cool man, glad to hear you made it. Thnx for the update.