Jettech1

I love Michelins!!! That's the only tire I would run on my Mercedes back in the day because, well, they were perfect! They rode amazingly. They lasted about 50k. Yes even back then they were top dollar, but worth every penny. Now today talking about our HD trucks.....ummmm.... I don't know. I think they would be great for a road only HD truck, of which most of my driving is. BUT damn, they are top dollar. Todays tires are super expensive. Almost regardless of brand as well. I loved them on my benzes but....maybe a possible option. Maybe.. I will look into it sir.

I'm here to help sir. Do I know it all....NO....but have I done a lot of reading and real world use...YES!!

Maybe, probably...who knows. The extra weight will surely have a difference at some point. But I've the got the lighter weight gasser. Who knows...unless someone has the time to accurately track this stuff, it's still a weird whatever...lol

Let me try to clear some things up here because I can see some confusion. I'm not the God of anything, but I do know my stuff when it comes to towing. First let's start with payload and tongue weight. As we know payload is amazingly high on our 2500's especially the gassers that are lighter than the diesels. So let's say the 2500 gassers have an average payload of 3500lbs, of which most do. Now that includes everything added to the truck, people, cargo, you name it, everything is added into that payload number. Tongue weight is also included if you have a hitch pulled Travel trailer. For example, we have a Grand Design Imagine 2800BH. We filled it with all of our stuff, including the fridge, I filled the fresh water tank too (55Gallons) because it is forward of the axles then took it to the CAT scales and weighed that beast. The results were I had 7k on the axles and 1k on the tongue. Believe it or not my rear helper springs were not even contacting the base pack of springs. Not bad at all when you have 3500lbs to play with. Now, let's talk about 5th wheel and pin weight. 10% of the overall weight of what you are towing is the golden rule. So if your giant ass camper weighs 16k, you are looking at 1600lbs of pin weight that is over the rear axles. Totally different weight placement when compared to a hitch travel trailer. Now that 1600lbs reduces your payload by.....1600lbs. But you still have basically 1900lbs of payload left to play with. So let's talk about the other basic rule of towing. Stay within 75% of max capabilities for safety reasons. So your 1900lbs, for safety reasons becomes 1425. Not bad at all, actually quite impressive. You can add air bags, timberens, whatever, just remember those items do not increase your overall payload number. Payload is payload, it's a hard number. Those items might level out your truck and make it ride better, but they never increase your payload. I really hope this helps others and makes a lot of sense. Safety is #1. The rest is enjoy the ride because these HD trucks are friggen amazing!!! One other thing I forgot to add is that I no longer use sway bars for our travel trailer. To me they are useless and serve little purpose. Pump your E rated tires up to 75psi, and hopefully your campers have e-rated tires as well. Pump them up to 75psi too. Not a problem at all towing. Sway is minimum and I love not using them. They really are a pain in the ass. The 1500 guys have to use them, us HD guys.....throw them away....they are useless. Just my personal opinion all after towing our camper thousands of miles. Be well and if you have any questions, I might be able to help.

I can't really complain, they have been amazing up until the 43k mark. As we all know these trucks are quiet, like super quiet inside and just recently I started hearing them. I hate tire noise but there's still enough tread at 44k plus that I'll stop rotating them and just let them wear down where they are. I bet I get another 10k out of them if I can "stand" the little bit of noise they are emitting. I'm being a little dramatic here, they are still fairly quiet, but I can hear them....lol... Anyhow for the area I live in (Bama) they have been amazing!! This past Christmas we drove to our friends house in NH. I was excited to be able to use 4wd which is a rarity here in Bama. They worked exceptionally well in the snow and ice. So they still have some life left in them. I just want silence. They are wearing evenly, no signs of alignment issues, nothing. So what do you all think as a super quiet, mainly concrete jungle driving to and from work living in Bama that I should start researching? I've done some research on youtube, but I don't trust most of those reviews. So if any of you like quiet E rated tires like I do, what do you recommend? Edit: I've been very happy with the goodyears and have no problem buying another set of them. I was just wondering if there's something out there better I should look at.

I have a 22 gasser with the 5th wheel package and would not hesitate for a second to hook up a 16k lb camper to it, and that's with the 6 speed. I believe yours is the 10 speed which makes it even more doable. Just my opinion and COME on down to BAMA!!! Look up lake Martin campground. It's like 15 minutes from where we live. Biloxi has a lot of great places to stay as well right on the ocean. Only a short drive from Mobile. Enjoy sir and hit me up if you all stay at Lake Martin. Beautiful place to camp, heck we put our camper there for a couple weeks at a time while I still work in Dadeville, AL. Let me know, it would be great to see another forum member and trade notes on our campers and trucks! Dale

Engine hours....totally missed that one. Would have been nice to know if I hadn't been so intrigued by the overall mileage. But yet I see a bunch of these trucks sitting on side of the road idling for hours for road crews, providing heat and or A/C depending on the weather. Lights flashing etc. etc. Hopefully someone that works on a road crew will stumble upon this forum and reach out to us telling us the specifics we all love to know.

So let me clarify a bit Chuck. I'm sure, I don't have proof, that he had his air filter changed at some point. As far as the driveline fluids....nothing was changed. For the most part, aside from the engine oil, everything is still from the factory. Like I said, he had one sensor go bad, who knows, he didn't...lol... aside from oil and filter and tire changes and rear brake pads...NOTHING else. Drives it like he stole it and puts whatever gas he can find in it when he needs it. No gas additives, no oil additives, no nothing.

I think you're right. They were the inexpensive (at that time) unicorn in the HD segment that needs to be respected and brought up more!

That's amazing! Sometimes as owners like myself overthink things and treat our depreciating asset like a gem. I think it's always good to maintain our vehicles to keep them reliable. But on the other end of the scale where people ride them hard and put them away wet with little to no consideration for longevity, and the damn truck keeps going is amazing to me. Kind of makes you stop and think a bit.

Today at work, I had a person come out from a fire protection company to look over our fire extinguishers along with our fire extinguishing system at our facility. I was just the tour guide showing him where everything was. We had to go outside so he could check the back flow valves to the overall system and what did I see??? A long bed 22 work truck with the gasser in it. So of course I had to strike up a conversation with him about his work truck. This truck, he had been driving since new from the company, so here we go. 267k miles on it! I showed him my truck as to my interest in his work truck. He said he gets the oil changed when he can, often late because it's a company truck, and he travels around the southeast so he said it's not always easy to just stop anywhere and get an oil change. There was one sensor that he can't remember what it was that had to be replaced. Aside from that nothing!! No oil usage, not a problem at all. He said his biggest problem is staying near the speed limit because his words were "It likes to GO" LOL!! According to him, not one damn problem aside from a sensor he can't remember.....He also said he runs the crap out of it, his boss gets on his ass all of the time for speeding but he said it's so smooth he can't help it. But he did admit he drove it very aggressively and lets it idle for long periods of time depending on weather conditions. I asked him if he uses a certain kind of fuel....same story....whatever is available when I need it. I asked if he's ever had any other maintenance done to it......NOPE....lol....Stock everything, no nothing but the factory stuff. One more note, oil and filter changes only and a few set of tires as well. I just remembered he said he had the rear brake pads replaced "last year" whatever ta hell that means mileage wise...lol.... OK, so hearing this is very cool, but kind of makes you wonder a bit. Like why isn't his intake valves clogged up due to direct injection? I spent 150 bucks on an oil separator that may have been a total waste of money. Sometimes you see something like this and it truly makes you wonder. Did I just piss money away on something due to marketing or should I have just left everything alone and drove it like I stole it? Or perhaps in his case, drive it like it isn't yours? His is still going strong, he loves it but treats it like a company truck which means, do the least, beat the crap out of it and only do the minimum to keep it going. Interesting day of learning for me concerning our trucks, but it did make me proud of mine and the Chevy gasser! Anyhow, true story. I probably can't answer any other questions if you have them because it wasn't my truck. But if you have any I can try. I did look it over pretty good so I might be a little help.

I serviced it once last fall, my truck had about 38k miles on it and I installed it shortly after I bought my truck, so we will say it had about 36k miles on the filter. I used K&N filter cleaner on it. Ran a hose inside of it to wash out the bugs and other debris from the external folded pleats, let it sit in the sun to dry out, then oiled it with K&N filter oil. I let it sit overnight to help drain off any excess, wiped down the rubber attachment section and put it back on. It's a giant filter as compared to a flat panel K&N filter that replaces the stock one. I've used those before and never had a problem with them either. I think they are a great alternative to spending almost 400 bucks like I did for the whole CAI setup. But than again the CAI filter I have is huge!! LOL...and I like a little intake growl, sounds pretty cool to me...

Chuck I run the S&B cold air intake and was expecting some visual dirtiness to the sensor. Nothing, looked brand new. But I did spray it down of which I said earlier did make a tiny difference in mpg. How I don't know. Perhaps there was a bit of microbial build up... I really don't know. If I took a picture of it and posted here, it would look brand new! The MAP sensor as well. What I need to do is take off the intake tube going to my throttle body and see what's going on there. Everything else is clean as a whistle so I'm kind of expecting it to look new as well. I honestly did expect some kind of build up in the intake tube and on the sensors due to my filter being an oil coated filter...ZERO! Even running my fingers in the intake tube. ZERO of anything. At the end of the day I'm impressed with the S&B intake. After 40k plus miles, it's still keeping everything nice and clean on the inside and I have to admit sounds pretty darn good too. It should at least do that for the money they get for them.

Not being condescending here but do you know what the pedal monster does?

I somewhat agree. I did clean my MAF sensor with MAF sensor spray and believe it or not, it made a difference in mpg. Not much but notable. I sprayed my MAP sensor as well and it didn't do crap. So who knows....

Yes it is a half ton. And all he did was complain about sway. I looked out when they took off and his bars were way too high. But at the end of the day, what did I do? Say nothing....lol...I mean why? He's proud of his truck, the last thing he needs is me to tell him he's majorly screwing up. Right?

They don't. That's the lie they believe. All they are looking at is how much it can tow. Not capacity. We have friends that bought an AT4 that was over capacity with their camper but just shrugged their shoulders and bragged about how much it can tow. I was like, ok....whatever. Not getting into that numbers game with you all...be safe. And all the guy did was complain about trailer sway and how he couldn't get his sway bars adjusted right. I wish I could have told him, your sway bars are not the issue dude. It's your truck that is severely overloaded capacity wise. Oh well...sometimes for me it's best to not get into that conversation because people get really offended real quickly after bragging about their tow package.

I'm a numbers guy so I love numbers. When it comes to payload, for some reason a lot of people don't know what that means. The given payload numbers on a truck are rock solid numbers. They can't be changed with Timbrens, air bags or anything else. That is a hard number regardless of how you change anything on your truck suspension wise. And if you start out with say, 2100lbs of payload like the RAM 2500, and your camper has 1k lb of tongue weight, or your 5th wheel has 1500lbs of pin weight, it won't take much to push your truck over payload capacity. What most don't realize say, "my truck has the towing package so it can tow 11k lbs". Ok, maybe it can...but how much is your tongue weight or pin weight....that's where people start to look at you funny like an alien...lol....Payload is the number 1 factor everyone should be aware of for safety reasons and driveability.

Here's the trade off when it comes to the RAM 2500/3500. So I rode in a 2500 with the coil spring rear suspension. I was impressed big time!! But here's the catch, the 2500's only have around 2100lbs of payload depending on a lot of things but that's about it. Now move up to the 3500 leaf spring rear end and payload moves up to around 4k lbs. I haven't ridden in one of those but owners say it can have a harsh ride. So I'm used to a fairly harsh ride in my 2500 with a 3500lb payload so it's no big deal to me. But if you don't need a lot of payload, the RAM 2500's ride like a 1500 in my opinion. Very nice and giving.

I will look at them tomorrow but I do know the last time I looked at that brake pad wear screen the rears were showing a less % than the fronts. I'll crawl under it tomorrow and take some pics that might answer your question. Aside from the unknown wear the brakes are amazing!! It took a while though after I first bought it. At first they sucked! Spongy, lots of pressure needed. After about 5k miles they started acting normally with I will say (normal pedal pressure) needed to slow down. One tip that I used was to push them as hard as you can 3 times while idling. And slowly releasing the brake pedal. Believe it or not that makes a huge difference. I only did it twice and they have been good to go ever since.

Funny you mention the electronic problems. After doing a ton of research online and asking around to other RAM owners, I decided to keep my truck. Reason is their only love (for the most part) was the engine. Aside from that they all complained of electrical glitches that would come and go. Typically worked fine when they took it to the dealer but when they were on a trip or wherever they would show up again. One other thing they complained about was the clunky drivetrain. That one kind of surprised me a bit thinking the Cummins engine and drivetrain was the ELITE. Well maybe the engine is but the rest of the truck most people complained about to some degree. So I've decided to keep my spot on reliable 22 Custom model that I do absolutely love and just put the idea of the cummins drivetrain back where it should be. Now if GM decided to put that engine and ZF trans in their trucks.....I will be waiting in line for one. 43k miles and smiles so far. I still love it all!!

Great conversation here all. I really appreciate it. I've learned quite a bit by reading everything that has been written and truly appreciate the time it took you all to do that. I actually am looking at the 3500 SRW 2026 short bed quad cab. One person said the 3500's have leaf springs instead of coils. To me, that's education because I had no idea of that and that's what I really appreciate is being educated....learning....I'm the guy who researches everything that costs more than 100 bucks, and luckily my wife is the queen of deals as well. Another great reason that I love this site....so much knowledge to be had if you just ask. Please keep the knowledge flowing because I'm taking it all in and it really helps when it comes to making that jump if I do. You all are amazing!!!! Thank you so much!! My truck has been paid for after the first 3 months of ownership so that's not a factor. I guess the real factor is do I need a diesel and can I justify it??? Hell no....have I always wanted one....YESSSS.....but I've always wanted the Cummins, not the duramax nor the the powerstroke, and with Ram going with ZF just made me drool even more in my old age. I've said this before, my perfect truck would be a chevy HD with the Cummins in it. Probably a stupid idea knowing that I LOVE my current gasser, but hell, sometimes stupid ideas work out for the best, and sometimes not...lol....I'm still learning and swaying to say the least.

I wish I had a crystal ball as we all probably wish. My 22 Custom has been spot on damn near perfect. Not one complaint other than a weird idle, which it has done since new. Doesn't stall or anything, just a little bumpy. Hard to explain, other than that, absolutely perfect at now 41k miles. So my fear is, I will end up with a dealer queen that refuses to leave the shop. I don't need a diesel for towing, our camper only weighs 8k fully loaded. So the actual NEED as I call it is not there. It's the desire of a 59 year old man to finally own a bad ass cummins diesel backed up by the new ZF8 HP75 transmission that have an amazing reputation. Because of the reliability of my current gasser it makes it hard. If it had been one of the oil suckers and was plagued with problems, it would be an easy move to the Ram. That's where I'm having a hard time deciding because my current truck is dead on reliable and does everything I want it to do with ease. But darn it would be nice to have over 1000 lb/ft of torque and the best exhaust brake on the market. Ugggggg. lol.... On another note I did run my VIN through KBB and was shocked at the trade-in value. I expected it to be a LOT lower than what KBB is reporting so that's a good thing. I think people are catching on that the 6.6 gasser is probably one of the most over built engines GM has made in years.

I need to do a lot of research here before my wandering eye dips into my pocket. Honestly I have no idea if they use the old style U channel frames or if they are built tough as nails like our frames. I need to educate myself bigtime.

I couldn't agree more. I see you are from Vermont. What an awesome state, my wife and I traveled there a few years ago from our friends house in Derry, NH that we were visiting. We went to Quechee, what a beautiful place to see. Good for you all, enjoy!!!