Probably a little more background on how I ended up getting the current truck might be in order. In August 2015 I purchased a 2015 Ram 3500 dually with the Cummins/Aisin transmission to tow our 15k lbs. 5th wheel trailer (our home) during my 3 months that I'am not working. Original plans were to Get a bigger trailer, toy hauler most likely that would be in the 18-20k lb range. The dually was rated at 29,500 lbs towing so well over my towing needs, it pulled the 5er like it wasn't even there.
After spending the winter months in southern Arizona last year we just decided that was not quite the way we wanted to spend our time off next year. So what to do? The 5er left us little options, with the hitch in the bed it left no room for a slide in camper. We could get a teardrop trailer that we could tow in tandem with the 5er and then hitch it too the dually when wanting to go further off road. That would be a hilarious sight though a truck capable of towing 15 tons pulling a trailer it can hardly even see in its mirrors.
The other option was to sell the 5er and get a bumper pull travel trailer and then a slide in camper for the more remote places we wanted to go to. The 800 lb gorilla in the room though for both plans was the fact that the truck was a dually not all that well suited for very serious off road ventures.
In May this year I went to the Overland Expo to look at trailers and campers and other possible options. Saw a couple of things that interested me, the one thing that got me excited was the cab/chassis truck AEV had at their booth. After talking with them about my truck and how I could make it into a truck like that it became obvious that it would be a lot of work and expense that I really wasn't willing to do. I left the Expo knowing I basically had the wrong truck, but since it was the one I had it was what I would use. All of a sudden I was not that excited about getting a camper or teardrop anymore.
Then in early August with about 9,000 miles on the truck, a check engine light comes on the dash. Not sure why since the truck was running great, fuel mileage was better than ever not even a bad gauge reading. Take it to the dealership to see what's up thinking they would hook it up to see what the code was, reset it and be on my way. The tech looked up the code and determined that the truck needed to be seen by the diesel tech guru. They said give us a couple hours and will get back to me. OK I will go get some lunch across the street and while waiting looked at some trucks to kill the time. This is when I spotted my future truck. Anyway service advisor calls me and says we are getting you a rental car we need to order parts to fix your truck. What parts does it need? The catalytic converter and the DEF injector. Really? It only has 9k on it what the .....We discussed how I drive the truck and determined that I was just not driving it hard enough and the emission end of the system was plugging up. They said it would be warranteed this time but if it happened again there was a good chance they would not warrantee it again. They also said that they have been seeing this problem more than a few times.
So now my problem is what am I going to do? I can't really change up my driving habits much I live in a national park, not a lot of roads to drive around on, certainly none that I can drive faster than 45mph on. I would have to go outside the park to be able to drive farther and faster, not what I really wanted to. I could also park the truck and not drive it as often, but then what was the point of having it if I can't drive it.
After thinking about it for a couple weeks I traded it in on the truck I should have gotten in the first place. I'am also excited about getting a camper again.
