2014 Ram 1500 Laramie on 2040-cars

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Ram HD Pickup Lineup First Drive Review | The torque king cometh

LAS VEGAS — Ram is thriving. The truck brand is coming off its best sales year ever, and its all-new 2019 Ram 1500 has won just about every truck award there is to win, including North American Truck of the Year. Now Ram is launching the world's torquiest pickup truck ever, the new 2019 Ram Heavy Duty. The burliest version packs 1,000 pound-feet of twist, but there's a lot more to this truck than its obscene amount of low-end grunt. It's also the quietest, most comfortable, and most refined heavy-duty pickup Ram has ever made. Most power, payload and towing The 2019 Ram Heavy Duty isn't exactly all-new. It's more of a major refresh, the HD's first since 2014 and the second since this generation debuted in 2010. The truck is now infused with much of the styling, technology and much of the interior of its light-duty little brother, the Ram 1500. Only the HD's cab, doors and bedsides are essentially unchanged, along with its 6.4-liter Hemi V8, which is now standard on all 2500 and 3500 models. The unpopular 5.7-liter Hemi is no longer available. Ram continues to offer two versions of its Cummins inline six-cylinder diesel power on all models except the 2500 Power Wagon. The 6.7-liter Cummins Turbo Diesel, which costs an extra $9,100, and the High-Output version have both been reengineered for more power, more durability and significantly less noise. The Cummins still pumps out 370 horsepower at 2,800 rpm, but its torque output has jumped from 800 to 850 pound-feet at 1,700 rpm. The HO version, which is only available on the 3500, gets a 15 hp bump to 400 hp at 2,800 rpm, and its torque climbs from 930 to that magical 1,000 lb-ft at 1,800 rpm. Redline remains at just 3,250 rpm, and a column-shifted six-speed automatic still backs both engines. Hemi models, including the Power Wagon, have been upgraded to an 8HP75R eight-speed from ZF and a dash-mounted rotary shifter. The Hemi's power ratings are unchanged at 410 hp and 429 lb-ft of torque, but the V8 now has a more advanced cylinder deactivation system for improved fuel economy and smoother operation when only four of its cylinders are firing. The eight-speed's gearing also betters the Power Wagon's crawl index from 35:1 to 51:1 for improved low-speed off-roading. Most Ram HD buyers spring for the diesel. The most popular model is the 2500 4x4 Crew Cab Laramie with the Cummins, but trucks with the 6.4-liter and the new eight-speed feel considerably quicker on the road. Even the big boy 3500s.

GM being sued over imploding Bosch fuel pumps in Duramax diesel trucks

Texas-based law firm Hilliard Martinez Gonzalez (HMG) this week filed a class-action lawsuit against General Motors over an alleged issue with Bosch CP4 fuel pumps. The suit claims Bosch designed the CP4 pump to work with European diesel fuel, which is thicker than U.S. diesel. When GM installed that pump in the 6.6-liter Duramax engine used from the 2011 to 2016 model years, the lawsuit claims the thinner U.S. fuel didn't provide enough lubrication, allowing air pockets to form in the fuel pump. That, in turn, allegedly let metal rub against metal inside the pump, causing the pump to eventually disintegrate and "send thousands of metal shards into the fuel injection system and every part of the engine." The Detroit News reported on the most recent lawsuit filed in Michigan's Eastern District Court, but the case is another piece of nationwide legal maneuvering going on since at least last September. Every U.S. truck maker used the Bosch CP4 fuel pump, and HMG originally went after all of them, as well as Bosch. On September 30, 2018, HMG filed a class-action suit in Texas on behalf of eight plaintiffs. The law firm wanted to prosecute the affair under RICO — the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — and named 10 defendants: FCA US LLC, FCA North America Holdings, LLC, F/K/A Chrysler Group, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, N.V., Ford Motor Company, General Motors LLC, Robert Bosch GmbH, Robert Bosch LLC, VM North America, Inc., and VM Motori S.P.A.  The firm filed another suit in Florida on Nov. 2, 2018, against the same 10 defendants, again under the RICO statute, this time on behalf of more than 30 plaintiffs. We don't know how many other suits might have been filed, but the two suits mentioned apparently didn't have legs — the courts dismissed both quickly. So HMG shifted its strategy away from the RICO angle, and focused its efforts on GM, filing suit in California on Nov. 20, 2018. Instead of trying to catch 10 fish with a small net, HMG wants to score one fish with a big net. The results have borne more promise for the plaintiffs. In July this year, a judge in California denied GM's motion to dismiss, noting "the alleged defect is central to the vehicleÂ’s function." This latest suit filed on Aug. 6 in Detroit singles out GM again.  The Bosch CP4 is known to be problematic, however.

2013 Ram 1500

Enough Is Enough. Finally.
Not long ago, the efforts of an automaker to put a six-cylinder engine into a pickup truck went something like this: take the basic bread-and-butter V8, lop two cylinders off one end of the block and call it a day. The resulting engines were generally pretty rough around the edges, and while they were able to churn out reasonable amounts of torque, they generally weren't good at anything else. Instead of being smooth running, they shook and shimmied; in place of a quiet highway jaunt, they operated well outside their low-rpm comfort zones and sent a corresponding racket throughout the cabin. And, instead of returning significantly superior fuel economy over their V8 counterparts, they guzzled gas and spat noxious vapors out their tailpipes.
In other words, the only reason to choose the base V6 engine over an optional V8 was to save money on the initial purchase, and that usually meant you'd be driving home in a stripped-out machine and would be lucky to have power windows, cruise control and air conditioning.