So, I did a thing

Yep, the tech has changed and they now have variable vaneing which gives them faster spool-up, but they are still fraught with problems. High temperatures with high rpm and typical low oil pressure of modern engines makes for trouble at some point. My gripe is when they are placed on gasoline engines which are usually not strong enough to produce the extra power. Diesels are the place for them as the diesel designed to produce massive power for their size and they can afford to much higher oil pressures and oil flow.
 
Paxilpapa said:
Yep, the tech has changed and they now have variable vaneing which gives them faster spool-up, but they are still fraught with problems. High temperatures with high rpm and typical low oil pressure of modern engines makes for trouble at some point. My gripe is when they are placed on gasoline engines which are usually not strong enough to produce the extra power. Diesels are the place for them as the diesel designed to produce massive power for their size and they can afford to much higher oil pressures and oil flow.
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Gas engines can handle them fine IF designed for it. A boosted engine definitely needs to have stronger top and bottom ends to handle the greater cylinder and crank pressures. Some of the boosted engines of days past were not strengthened for it, and they didn't like to hold up. Lot's of stretched head bolts, blown head gaskets, broken main bearings.

The Dodge Hellcat engine has been surprisingly reliable, given the power it puts out. It's funny...back in my teenage years, getting 1 HP per CI was the holy grail of performance. Now, that's the low end of engine output. EX: My hemi is 347 CI but produces 395 HP in mild tune. And they can easily be pumped up. And they do all this while running smooth as a sewing machine. Back in the day, a high performance engine with a big cam loped like crazy!

The new Hurricane inline six that will replace the HEMI will be 3 litres and in it's highest output version will produce well over 500 HP. That will put it at nearly 3 HP per CI. Wow!
 
Guard Dad said:
Gas engines can handle them fine IF designed for it. A boosted engine definitely needs to have stronger top and bottom ends to handle the greater cylinder and crank pressures. Some of the boosted engines of days past were not strengthened for it, and they didn't like to hold up. Lot's of stretched head bolts, blown head gaskets, broken main bearings.

The Dodge Hellcat engine has been surprisingly reliable, given the power it puts out. It's funny...back in my teenage years, getting 1 HP per CI was the holy grail of performance. Now, that's the low end of engine output. EX: My hemi is 347 CI but produces 395 HP in mild tune. And they can easily be pumped up. And they do all this while running smooth as a sewing machine. Back in the day, a high performance engine with a big cam loped like crazy!

The new Hurricane inline six that will replace the HEMI will be 3 litres and in it's highest output version will produce well over 500 HP. That will put it at nearly 3 HP per CI. Wow!
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Modern gas engines are modular cast aluminum and are barely strong enough to last 180000 miles on there own with 9.5 to 1 compression. the engines destined for super charging and turbos start out at 7.5 to 1, mostly for emissions reasons. I watch a guy on Youtube called 'I do cars', he looks a lot like Adam Sandler, and is very personable. He salvages engine for a living and breaks done a different engine core in each episode. You'd be surprised at the number of turboed engines that bend rods and ventilate the blocks,,, aluminum engines scare me.
 
I'm happy to see the return to inline sixes, they are better in every way except length. They went to V-6s mainly because of transverse mounting in front wheel drive cars; the inline sixes were too long to mount sideways.

An inline six is also a perfectly balanced engine, so they are inherently smooth.

Modern gas engines are modular cast aluminum and are barely strong enough to last 180000 miles on there own with 9.5 to 1 compression.
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Well, an aluminum block should have steel cylinder sleeves. Remember the big experiment Chevy did on the Vega engine? They used an aluminum block without sleeves. The theory was that the aluminum had a high concentration of silica, and they used an acid to etch away the aluminum, supposedly leaving a coating of almost pure silica. Yeah, didn't work out so good. They recalled most of them and put steel sleeves in them.

We've gotten 400K plus out of our van engines, the best being the GM 6.0 and the Ford 4,6.
 
Now, this was a badass car.

280px-Vega_Chevrolet.jpg
 
The UConnect system has been utter crap since I got this truck and dealer was pretty clueless. It would lose XM Radio and I would have to disconnect the battery cable to get it back. Presets would disappear, back-up camera would work when it wanted to, and some of the steering wheel buttons wouldn't work.

I filled out a survey with Stellantis and ripped them pretty bad. They called me and then emailed me about a firmware update that had just came out. The dealer installed it today and so far so good. I'll update once we get some time on it.
 
Kind of a four month report on the new truck:

All in all, I like it. I like the look, it drives wonderful, extremely quiet and smooth vehicle. Performance is very good. Though it's not one of the "Supertrucks", 0-60 in under 7 seconds is pretty dang good for a vehicle this heavy. I remember when a 9 second 0-60 was hot rod numbers, now it's pretty common. The automatic transmissions with more gears are undoubtedly contributing to this; I have noticed that my RAM (8-speed) always seems to be in the right gear and under acceleration it stays in it's power band. Some vehicles even have 10-speed trannies now.

The early 5th gen RAMs had a problem with weak A/Cs; this appears to have been fixed, the A/C is cold and powerful.

I had a lot of trouble with the UConnect system at first; kept losing Sat Radio, dropping presets, and the steering wheel controls wouldn't work at times. They did a major firmware update and that seems to have fixed most of the issues, but I still find it to be clunky and buggy. Even the people at the dealer felt that too many systems were reliant on the UConnect system, it controls almost everything. Perhaps a case where we've taken technology too far?

The auto-start/stop is a bit annoying, but I guess that's the case for all vehicles that have this. The eTorque system helps somewhat with this, and of course it can be disabled but that has to be done every time.

I only have about 2300 mile son it and it's almost all around town, and I sit and idle at times while on the phone. Average mileage is 11-12, which is probably not bad for how I've been driving it. I've made a couple of trips to Conyers, and it wasn't much to go on but hwy mileage seemed much better. It was a dream on the road; powerful and very nimble to be a truck. Brakes are very powerful, the rotors on it are huge to be a half-ton truck.

I've had a few vehicles with air conditioned seats, and most really didn't work well. They do in this one. The leather is perforated and you can actually feel the cool air coming out of the seat.

This truck has the emergency automatic braking system. Though it can be a bit annoying, it does work. When I was on I-20 in traffic, I was looking at my phone and a car in front of me hit the brakes. My truck beeped loudly and hit the brakes as well. But the rear braking can be aggravating; when carrying cargo with the tailgate down, it sees that as an object and will slam on the brakes when backing up if you don't disable it. I probably looked like a dummy while backing up in the Home Depot parking lot. :)

As we all know, Chrysler (now Stellantis) has had it's share of quality issues in past years. This vehicle gives a feeling of much improved quality as compared to their older vehicles. Stellantis seems to be a much better ran company, so maybe they can continue to get better. Yeah, I'm not thrilled that its a global corporation, but that seems to be where they are all going nowadays. Even GM and Ford are somewhat global now.

Like most extended cab trucks these days, the cabs have gotten bigger and the beds smaller. The bed on this one is only 5'6". Admittedly, that is pretty short when using it to haul lumber and stuff. I do like all the room in the back seat, but I find myself missing the 6.5' bed. But that's not just a RAM issue, it's how they are all going.

I have pulled my job trailer once with it and it did great! You can feel the electric motor assist when taking off with the trailer. I seriously had to keep reminding myself that it was back there!

I like the truck. It's not perfect, but none are. I think I'll be glad I bought it.
 
I finally got a good explanation of what the e-Torque does.

It does NOT keep the A/C running at stop lights like I had heard. But that hasn't been much of a problem so far, even today in the very hot weather.

What it does do is to restart the engine after it shuts down at stops, and in 4/10s of a second. And it throws in the 130 ft lbs of torque off the line which makes the stop/start and take-off almost imperceptible. It also kicks in while the engine is in 4 cylinder mode to help pull and delay switching to all 8. It also serves as the alternator; converting the 48 volts from that battery to 12 volts for the service battery.

RAM claims it's good for 2 mpg. I have not driven enough to confirm that, I only have like 2500 miles on the truck, most of which around Hiram. But in my typical use...start/stop and too much idling; it is getting 2-3 mpg better than the Tundra did. The Tundra was a magnificent machine, but gas mileage was not it's forte. My service manager is sure loving it though. We put a ladder rack on it and put it to work. Drives a lot better than a van does, and dang sure quieter than a big, metal box.
 
Boss 302 said:
I remember one time a guy who put a nitrous kit in his Vega. The car caught on fire. We laughed our butts off.
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My cousin had a Triumph TR6. He traded it in on a more reliable car.
The very next day it burst into flames on the 'used car' lot.

My high school friend had a Triumph TR-250.
It would catch fire as we drove around town. We didn't mind. It was Winter. It kept us warm.
 
My brother was stationed at Travis AFB in California 76-78. He bought a 1970 MGB from an airman who was going overseas. Soon after he bought it, he needed to replace the front-end suspension and the tie-rods. That cost him $1,100 and he had to wait for more than a month for the parts to arrive from England. $1,100 in '76 is just over $5,600 today. He sold it the first chance he could.
 
Boss 302 said:
My brother was stationed at Travis AFB in California 76-78. He bought a 1970 MGB from an airman who was going overseas. Soon after he bought it, he needed to replace the front-end suspension and the tie-rods. That cost him $1,100 and he had to wait for more than a month for the parts to arrive from England. $1,100 in '76 is just over $5,600 today. He sold it the first chance he could.
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Yeah, anything that is not popular enough to have aftermarket parts made is not for me. I don't like single source parts.
 
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