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Ram Air Suspension Concerns and Saftey Issues

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2019_Ram

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I do enjoy having the air suspension on my Ram 2500, however, I have come across several issues with it that concern me.
  • When pulling a trailer loaded with rock, just shy of 14k total, 1.3k tongue weight, the truck acts fine. The trailer pulls well, handles well, and is well within the abilities of the truck. The issues start when unloading. The rock is unloaded from the back to the front, by hand, one shovel full at a time. Half way through unloading, the truck is moved forward. During this, the message Air Suspension Disabled Due to Payload message appears. The trailer unloading is continued until empty. The truck is moved to unhook the trailer, where it is still displaying the Air Suspension Disabled icon, even though nearly all the weight has been removed. At this point in time the trailer cannot be unhooked without running out of jack on the trailer. The rear of the truck is now sitting nearly 5 inches higher than when the trailer was loaded. The truck will not re-level, no combination of Lower Bed button pushes, or entering into Tire Jack Mode, Alignment Mode, or Transportation Mode have any effect. Restarting the truck does not do anything either. The only way for the truck to be reset and have the air suspension work normally is to drive and hit 14 mph or higher. This is both inconvenient and potentially dangerous depending on the condition of the load on the trailer. If the trailer is unloaded without the truck being woken up, this message does not appear.
  • When this happens, and you do not drive over 14mph to reset the air suspension, cribbing must be used under the trailer jack to get the trailer off the truck. However, when the truck returns to normal after driving, the trailer is too high to be able to re-hitch. This create another set of hazards when trying to get the trailer back on the truck.
  • There have been a number of times where the trailer must be unhitched half way through unloading something. This creates a hazardous situation, when the truck refuses to adjust/dump the air suspension to allow the normal unhitching of the trailer.
  • There should be a way to reset\dump the air suspension when the load has been reduced/removed, besides driving at 14 mph or higher, since the air suspension isn’t intelligent enough to realize this on its own.
To address these issues, there should be a software update that allows the air suspension to be reset while stationary through the Uconnect. In addition to this, it would be extremely nice if the Uconnect had a gauge to give the driver an indication of how much load is being supported by the rear of the truck, either by PSI or estimated pounds. The air suspension is very nice for keeping the vehicle level, but because of this it makes it very hard to judge where to position a load on a trailer when the truck doesn't sag.
 
Next time, get the truck where you are at to unload and go into the radio and change the air suspension into Jack Mode, this would be the mode for lifting the truck on a lift or jack for maintenance. Once you unload and have done your moves... Go back in and return to normal mode by un-checking jack mode.

Do the same if you are going to dangerously load an equipment trailer with no cribbing under the rear of the trailer, otherwise as you lift the rear of the truck you will anger the air suspension..
 
That work around didn't cross my mind. I'll have to try that next time.

Only problem with that is I have to remember to do that before I start unloading. With my luck, I'll remember half way thru... You know, when it's too late...
 
2019_Ram said:
That work around didn't cross my mind. I'll have to try that next time.

Only problem with that is I have to remember to do that before I start unloading. With my luck, I'll remember half way thru... You know, when it's too late...
Click to expand...
I had a 2017 RAM Rebel with 4 corner air, no steel springs at all. You had to learn how to use the jack mode or it would be mad at you anytime you used a trailer! It becomes second nature after you do it a couple times. It's a quick swipe through the menu and a touch of the setting. I assume it's at least similar in the 2500 truck menu.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
No. I brought it up at the last visit to my dealer when all this virus stuff started closing things. I want to give them the benefit of getting something moving on this before doing anything else. I'm waiting until things start opening again and I'm going to follow up with them. If they aren't able to get any results, then I will be venture down other avenues.

In my eyes, giving the driver the ability to reset the air suspension would solve the issue and be very easy to do with a few code changes.
 
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