Well, that was fast. Three months really flies by when you’re putting lots of miles on a new vehicle, perusing the settings, changing them to your liking, and enjoying your new surroundings. Let’s see what my 2019 RAM 1500 Limited has been up to since I bought it in May. Spoiler alert – it’s been fun, but not without a few minor hiccups. On the plus side, although my toddler misses “the blue truck” as he calls it, he does enjoy the RAM, especially its power running boards and the “logo” on the steering wheel – he points it out frequently.
Stats:
Time Period: 5/4/2019 – 8/3/2019
Miles Driven: 3,305 / 3,305 (this update / total)
Average MPG: 16.4 mpg (reported by on-board computer)
Costs:
Maintenance Costs: $0.00
Repairs: $0.00
Total Cost (non-fuel): $0.00
Services Performed:
- 6/25/2019 – Took the truck to the selling dealer to have the passenger-side A-pillar trim replaced due to scratches introduced during the PDI process.
- 7/22/2019 – Took the truck to the selling dealer to have the driver’s side rear door aligned. It was sticking out at the bottom.
Summary:
First, let’s talk about the 2 service visits. During my pre-delivery inspection, I noticed a deep scratch on the passenger-side A-pillar interior windshield trim, which includes a grab handle. Apparently it sustained this scratch during the dealer’s PDI, but went unnoticed. The dealership gave me a “we owe” detailing this issue, and said to come in whenever was convenient to have it replaced. A quick call to the service department a few days later confirmed that the part was there and they scheduled me for the first visit.
While washing my truck for the first time, I noticed that the driver’s side rear door’s trailing edge stuck out a little bit – perhaps 1/8-1/4″. The passenger-side rear door was flush with the cab. I called the dealer’s service department and told them what I’d found, and while in for the replacement trim piece, I asked them to fix that as well. They found a dent in the lower rear corner of the door, and scheduled for a Paintless Dent Repair company to come out and said their body shop would handle the door realignment. Unfortunately, the body shop was booked for a month solid, hence the July visit.
After both visits, I can report that both the PDR guy and the dealer’s body shop did a fantastic job, returning my truck looking better than before. The newly-aligned door even made a better noise when closed, matching the other 3 doors. Job well done! Based on my current accumulation of miles, I’ll have at least one oil change to report on in the next update. Now back to your regularly-scheduled Summary.
This truck is beautiful, inside and out. The Indigo/Frost (dark blue/cream) interior is really striking, and it really goes well with the bronze accents and wood trim. The more I study it, the exterior design is quite cohesive and luxurious. I especially like the chrome body side moldings, as they make for a distinctive 3D character line. The RAM 1500 has really put the truck world on notice, and the sales figures show it. Current sales figures hint at several months where RAM has beaten GM’s Silverado and Sierra, and even come close to beating Ford’s F-150. That’s truly impressive from the perennial #3 seller. It also continues to impress not only myself, but passengers and other drivers as well. The 22″ wheels are handsome and draw a lot of attention, and it exudes luxury and comfort, creating a very peaceful place to be. With the weather being hot and humid, I’ve been driving the truck instead of riding my motorcycles to work, using the A/C and ventilated seats to beat the heat. The truck’s drivetrain and engine continue to break in, leading to higher fuel economy, even with the horrendous traffic and severe thunderstorms which have been plaguing my evening commute this summer.
With any new vehicle, there are hits, and there are misses. The hits definitely outweigh the misses with the RAM 1500. Standout features include the 12″ touchscreen, air suspension, and the side mirrors. The infotainment screen’s ability to be split is immensely useful, and its responsiveness is to be applauded. The air suspension’s Entry/Exit makes loading and unloading the bed easy, and those with bad joints like me will appreciate the low step-up height and the power-deploying running boards. The mirrors being on this list may surprise you, but as far as I know, the RAM 1500 is the only half-ton truck to feature both a blind spot warning light and convex spotter mirror on the same truck. Usually, it’s one or the other. I know it sounds like a little thing, but with both features, you can check your adjacent lane as well as 2 or 3 lanes over, very handy for freeway merging.
Back to that air suspension. It’s simply in a league of its own. It’s surprising in its ability to smooth out rough terrain. Driving over some pavement which had been only half-prepped for repaving, other vehicles were slamming on their brakes and bouncing over the rough patches, while the RAM simply glided over it. Nary a shake or bump was felt by anyone in the truck. And while my wife’s original reaction to this feature was to call it gimmicky, it comes in handy on an almost daily basis. Loading and unloading our kids in their car seats no longer requires lifting them high into the air, even my 5’3″ tall wife can load our infant’s car carrier onto its base without requiring my assistance!
Not to be left out, the Adaptive Cruise Control is quickly making a case for itself. While it’s RAM’s first attempt at it, it really counts as a 2nd-generation system. First-generation systems only worked above a certain speed, typically 12-30mph, whereas the RAM’s ACC handily navigates stop-and-go as well as highway-speed traffic. It also smooths out speed changes by allowing the following distance to vary slightly from the one set, adding a human element to its operation. If the truck stops for more than a few seconds, a tap on the gas pedal or pressing the cruise control’s Resume button gets the truck moving forward again.
While we’re on the subject, the auto stop/start system is really game-changing as well. I’ve driven a number of vehicles equipped with this feature, but the RAM has them all beat. It’s as unobtrusive as you can get, even with a 5.7-liter V8 under the hood – the auto stop/start systems I’ve experienced were more noticeable when paired with larger gas engines – occasionally thumping slightly when the engine shuts off, yet restarts are always lightning quick. Several passengers haven’t even noticed the engine shutting off until I tell them. When I’m by myself and can stand a little extra heat on a hot day, I’ll shut off the A/C as I approach a traffic light, especially if I know it’s a long cycle. This allows the engine to stay off until I actually get moving again. On one morning commute in particular, I sat for 2 light cycles at 5 minutes each. That’s 10 minutes of idling my HEMI didn’t have to do.
Elsewhere in the drivetrain department, the transmission has shown it’s a willing, if sometimes less than polished dance partner, offering up butter-smooth transitions most of the times, with the occasional rough 4-3 downshift. The regenerative braking of the eTorque system also has its hiccups, at roughly the same time as the 4-3 downshift. A nice touch, though, is slowing in traffic – the same regenerative system allows for partial one-pedal driving in said traffic.
During this quarter, I got a chance to tow my 7×14 enclosed trailer for almost 60 miles mostly highway. The owner’s manual specifies a top speed of 50 miles per hour for the first 500 miles of towing, so I set the ACC at 50 and got in the #3 lane on the highway to get to work, and the truck never balked at the 2,500lb weight, nor did it complain about the 3,500lb weight prior to heading to work – I had my 2016 Kawasaki Vulcan Vaquero strapped down inside the trailer and had dropped it off for service, hence the weight change. There was minimal porpoising and almost zero sway while towing, and the trailer brake controller engaged the trailer’s brakes, easing the burden on the truck’s binders. I suspect that any untoward movements of the trailer will be corrected by purchasing a 6″ drop bar to replace my current setup, which is a 4″ bar. With the air suspension automatically leveling the truck when the trailer is hitched up, there’s no sag, and hence the trailer sits higher in the front than it should. The blind spot monitoring system takes the trailer into account, going so far as to automatically detect its length and adding that to the length of the truck – a welcome help in DC Beltway traffic. In addition, the backup camera can be displayed on the infotainment screen for several seconds at any speed, which allowed me to check on my connection without exiting the truck or even stopping first.
I also hauled over 900lbs in the bed, with 350+lbs of passenger and cargo in the cab. This was pretty close to the truck’s rated payload of 1,320lbs. The truck never acted like it was loaded down, and the air suspension did its job in keeping the truck level. I used Entry/Exit mode to load and unload 10 80-pound bags of stone dust, as well as a quartz countertop (not pictured). A member of the 5th Gen RAM Forum posted that he had a shade over 4,000lbs of stone in his 2019 RAM 1500’s bed, almost 3 times what his payload rating was (1,355lbs), and the air suspension still kept the truck level. That just goes to show that there’s a good margin built into these trucks, but I certainly wouldn’t want to test that capacity every day.
So what about the misses I eluded to earlier? Well, there are a few gremlins that FCA’s software engineers need to work on. The most annoying were two instances where the 12″ infotainment screen failed. The first was the backup camera not displaying. Sensors in the rear bumper still functioned though, helping when the RAM was in Reverse. The second was the screen failing to display anything but the seat/camera controls. The steering wheel audio controls continued to function, but nothing else would display. In both cases, parking the truck and waiting an hour or so allowed the system to fix itself, and it hasn’t happened since May.
There’s also the issue with the air suspension that I mentioned in the review. When the key fob is used to lower the truck, more often than not, the truck won’t raise itself when driven. Two quick flicks of the air suspension toggle brings the truck back to Normal ride height and it works properly from there. If I already know I’ll be loading something into the bed, I’ll lower the truck before exiting, which bypasses the glitch. At highway speeds, the truck automatically drops its ride height to Aero mode for better efficiency, a 0.6″ change from Normal.
These are relatively minor issues and barely qualify as annoyances. As a software engineer, I get it – there’s a lot of lines of code, and since FCA does over-the-air updates to the uConnect system, and the dealer applies software updates when the truck is in for service, I’m confident it’ll get better in time. An example of this is a software update performed when the truck was in for the door realignment in July, which seems to have improved the air conditioning performance.
More annoying is the voice activation. uConnect is often lauded for its helpfulness, but I find that words like “address” need to be pronounced properly or you could end up dialing a friend with a name that, when garbled, sounds like “address”. “Ah-dress” is incorrect, whereas “Add-ress” gets recognized easier. Phone contacts are better-recognized, but I am more often entering addresses into the Navigation system while on the move. But, if you do get the voice activation to work, the address search functionality does accept more natural speech than some of FCA’s competitors’ systems. You can say “three twenty-five” instead of “three two five”, as the house number, for instance, and you also give it the state, which combines two or more steps into one long address.
Some of the more useful minor features of the truck are the “RAM Charger” wireless phone charging pad, and the under floor storage in the rear of the cab. The former keeps my phone’s battery topped off while driving, while the latter holds most of my “truck stuff”, things like bungee cords, a blanket, and tie-down straps. The deployable bed step has proven its worth too, and I’ve found that the rear stake pocket built into the bed rail makes for a good handhold for lifting myself up onto the tailgate. It’s not quite as nice as Ford’s tailgate step or configurable as GMC’s MultiPro tailgate, but it is quite a bit lighter and less complicated than both.
I am slowly but surely figuring out and using more of the truck’s features, and I look forward to trying out Android Auto in the future, as well as towing and hauling and taking the RAM on road trips, at least one of which will feature in the next update. This is a whole new ecosystem for me to get used to, coming from two Ford F-150s, so it’s been a culture shock, to say the least. Stay tuned to see what new things I uncover in the next 3 months!
by John Suit