Why do guys dislike the idea of having to pull the cab to get to injectors on a Powerstroke? I’m sure many mechanics don’t mind because they get paid by the hour…whether theyre pulling a cab or replacing break rotors. And they have an absurd amount of equipment to work with. The average truck owner wants a truck they can work on in theyre garage or driveway with a modest complement of tools, if necessary. Having to pull a cab to get at injectors is absurd. It just is.

As a mechanical engineer you should read up on the CP4 Lawsuits against GM and Ford. My 2011 Duramax was extremely well maintained and the CP4 fuel pump wiped out the whole system at only 55k miles. $9k repair bill. You are basically accusing hundreds (maybe thousands now) of people that they dont maintain their diesels properly. Funny that some of these pumps have even failed as low as 10k miles.

I have a good friend that's a Ford master diesel tech. He hates working on the new diesels. The cab has to be removed (been that way for a while) and it takes hours to get to anything vital. Ford warranty doesn't pay well and most of the time the claim is denied for warranty. If he wasn't so close to retiring he would have left in the last few years because of all the behind the scenes junk going on at Ford.

As a mechanical engineer, you should also know that the higher fuel psi pumps heavily rely on clean, dry diesel fuel. There is no formula for having a 30000+ psi pump survive contaminated fuel, even with the very best of surface coatings or filters.

Many people like to bash on manufacturers but don't like to admit they used fuel from the 'cheap' station down the road or never drained the water seperator on schedule.

I feel you give RAM waayy too much credit if you think their past performance is indicative of a positive, problem free future. Remember, this is the same company that usually has 10 open recalls per model year.

I firmly believe if the truck engine, any brand, is maintained well and according to schedule, it will provide a long reliable service life.

I get this is a RAM forum, but let's not loose a grip on reality here.

And to another point above: I think F-series maintains its “best selling” rating because of fleet sales. That and ford refuses to acknowledge that GMC and Chevy are the same, and I seem to recall that in the 1500-3500 segment the combined GM sales are higher than ford. But then again they also insist the 450 is a 1-ton and refuse to compare it to a Ram 4500 (because it’ll get smoked).

Buddy of mine is a powerstroke mechanic for a dealer in Dallas. His dad is a PS mechanic in Tampa. His whole family drives Cummins. PS owners pay for their really, really nice houses - Cummins trucks get them to work and back reliably day in and day out with just routine maintenance. My cousin is a process engineer for fomoco in Michigan. He drives a Ram too. That tells me everything I really need to know about the Cummins vs PS debate...

You have some good points. I look at the probability of it even cropping up, which I why I don't understand the issue most on here bring it up ..... Many truck buyers don't even keep the vehicles longer than the warranty period, which is another reason why I don't get the griping.

I think you were meaning to respond to someone else's comment. I was addressing only the notion that it would take minimal engineering to design a tilt cab assembly.

However, I think you're missing another point. While I don't plan on doing anything major to my drivetrain while it's under warranty -- and I've got a 7/84 max care plan -- I regularly do major work on our other vehicles that have no such luxury. Looking around here it's clear that a lot of buys with older Rams regularly swap engines as well.

For those of us who don't have access to a shop with a flexible 4-point lift, needing to pull a cab or a subframe to get to an engine is a big deal. My wife's Caddy succumbed to an accursed GM early timing chain failure -- an otherwise near new condition car just out of warranty suffered a catastrophic engine failure at just over 50k miles. The dealer wanted $11k to do that repair. Like heck I'm going to pay that when the long block was $3400 delivered. By the book, it's not possible to pull that quad OHC engine without doing it from underneath by dropping the subframe. The huge hemi heads totally block access to the upper transmission bolts. I don't happen to have a 4-point lift with swingarms to hold the unibody up while I drop the subframe, and I wasn't willing to do that with a pair -- or quartet -- of simple floor jacks. Pulling the blown engine was no big deal: I'd already torn it down for diagnosis and the heads were off. Installing the new engine without dropping the subframe meant, however, tearing it down -- including the gawdawful three-chain-six-tensioner-umpteen-plastic-guideway timing chain setup -- on the stand and then building it back up in place under the hood. That's a royal pain. And it's bad design -- a few fist-sized dents in the firewall would have mitigated the necessity of either dropping the subframe or swapping the engine in major modules.

Lifting a cab to swap an engine would be even less practical without a lift, and might not have a comparable workaround, no matter how much extra labor is involved. People who ultimately want to do their own major repairs aren't so much going to balk at the scope or breadth of the repair. Rather, they're going to be stymied by the lack of access to the proper equipment. I, for one, would not want to mess with trying to jack a cab off a chassis without the lift.

JMHO