Thoughts on Dodge RAM pickups?

dodge trannies get a bad rap for two reasons.

  1. the bean counters like to tell the engineers to replace critical components with plastic cause its cheaper. i know a few guys that work in the kokomo indiana trans plant.

  2. they arent tolerant of not changing the fluid or using the wrong fluid. i know countless people that say “just put dextron/mercron in there… its good enough” WRONG. ATF+3 or +4 ONLY. people dont change the fluid either. i dont care if you say “but i never changed the fluid in my toyota ever and it was fine and kept working when it was black as coal” dodges dont like it. you can get 200k out of it if you change the fluid regularly. i recommend once a year whether it needs it or not.

a buddy of mine, his parents got ~200k out of the stock trans in their grand caravan by changing the fluid regularly. it was the long wheelbase 3.3L with the 4-speed which was the one that got a bad rap due to laziness and using the wrong fluid.

Brian