LegendaryLawman
Legendary Pessimist
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2022
- Messages
- 352
- Reaction score
- 187
I think moving to the ZF will be a big win for RAM. The medium duty market is a different animal where the application of components has to work or you get lawsuits like International on there engines. The Point of these trucks is for work but for a large number of people that drive them like a light switch and expect them to last forever. Clutches need time to apply and torque should be applied smooth. That all said I have a 19'HO deleted and its really fun to drive it like a teenager sometimes lol. Frankly when it was stock I was really impressed with the factory tuning of the truck the turbo lag leaves something to be desired but the truck is built to tow and does it well.
Additionally on the Medium duty market. I managed a fleet of trucks equipped with Allison 3000 and 6.7 Cummins. These were all loaded to 100-120,000 lbs. 20 hrs. a day and drove by kids that just got a license i.e.. to the wood everywhere. other than a few warranty claims on leaking clutch's (known for on specific models). we had trucks with 20,000 hrs. and 80-100000 KM. The highest hour and milage ones typically had no major repairs causing there retainment.
My own truck is a frieghtliner single axle truck lives at 28000 lbs. does hills and runs in a mine all day. never had issues L9 Cummins with Allison 3500. Many co workers have Paccar trucks with autos and again no thought on trans issues.
Point is application, maintenance and operator are major contributors to success of a drive trains, the auto industries need to reinvent the wheel every year with bigger better offering meanwhile passing heavy R&D on to customer covered via warranty is crappy and does not led its self the the former two factors mentioned.
I think progress is good and Ram has always had some lacking in the trans sector. I just don’t see the ZF as being a fix all. The start stop feature, harder to maintain, skip shift, etc just don’t seem like it will raise reliability. The biggest benefit I see is the PTO option. I also fully expect for Ram to cheap out and have ZF save .62 cents here and there by using borderline substandard materials that will fail as planned obsolescence outside of the warranty period.
Maybe I’m wrong and it will be a bad a** trans but who knows