Sierra/Silverado vs. RAM 1500

[Wmoor004]

25 minutes ago, UncleDave said:

Beauty is only skin deep, but quality is enduring. In my experience, complexity is the enemy of reliability. I'd rather have a homely Chevy that is mechanically bulletproof and economical to operate, than a beautiful Ram that is flimsy, or a Gadget-Mobile Ford that is buggy, or a Toyota that is thirstier than an alcoholic camel. But that's just me and doesn't apply to everyone else, and as with any vehicle, YMMV.

Just admit you are a Chevy fan.  I know plenty of Ram, Tundra, and Ford owner that have no issue with their vehicles.

[UncleDave]

57 minutes ago, Wmoor004 said:

Just admit you are a Chevy fan.  I know plenty of Ram, Tundra, and Ford owner that have no issue with their vehicles.

As do I. I guess I over-generalized rather disparagingly based on my own experiences, and I apologize. I've never been brand-loyal and have had dozens of vehicles from almost every major manufacturer, foreign and domestic. Unfortunately, it's always the problematic ones that stand out in memory.

 

Yep, I'm a Chevy fan, but even more a classic Mopar fan... 

[HondaHawkGT]

On 8/3/2019 at 8:21 AM, ickyoldman said:

Ok....fwiw, the newest truck in that group is a 2010......Probably have that solved by now.  I had a 1998 Subaru Outback that turned the body to dust but the undercarriage was like new.  Same with my x's Toyota.  Look at the guys with gm products that are complaining at the time they take delivery that component rust is excessive and if you live in the northern states it's going downhill fast from there.  

That's because those trucks were the ones that were supposed to be covered by the LSC but most owners either didn't learn abouut the LSC until it was too late, or were unfairly denied replacement frames because Toyota weaseled out of coverage by originally only covering trucks in a limited number of states.

 

BTW, here's a 2013 Tacoma with the early stages of cancerous Toyota rot. Within a year or two, the frame will have rust perforation. As with most Tacoma (or Tundra) owners that have had frame rust, Toyota frames rust from the inside out (coinciding with the welds rusting) due to the way they're designed. The front section has huge openings that collect organic matter, dirt, and road salt thrown by the tires. The center frame rails are closed-C sections that collection the same debris. The front leaf spring mounts also catch debris that speed up corrosion (most Tacomas with advanced frame rot have major issues with the front leaf mounts). It's a poorly designed frame that only accelerates rust rot,  made worse by the awful frame coating they used for decades.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/2013-tacoma-frame-rust.567973/

 

A year or two later and it'll look like this:

 

 

 

There's a huge difference between guys on here that have surface rust thanks to the crappy wax coating, and the guys with Tacomas/Tundras (plenty of which had serious rust rot on models built after 2010 https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/rust-prevention-treatment-consolidation-thread.355928/). For the record, most Toyota truck owners had serious rust rot but were never given a replacement frame. Toyota's Limited Service Campaign limited frame replacements by requiring that frames have holes at least 10 millimeters or larger to quality. Many frames had perforation and holes that measured less than 10mm, in which case Toyota instructed dealers to only spray a CRC rust prevention coating over the perforated (rotted out) sections of the frame.

 

Toyota also tried to place all the blame on Dana, claiming they were totally unaware that Dana was supplying them frames with inadequate corrosion protection, which is complete and utter BS. That would mean that Toyota wasn't getting complaints for frame rot up until 2014 when they started issuing Limited Service Campaigns for rotted truck frames, but only in a handful of states, and again, only for frames that had huge 10mm holes through the frame.

 

Toyota had a history of rust rotting frames, so for them to act like it was a total surprise to learn that lter frames were rust rotting is a total joke. They had problems with premature rust rot (not surface rust, but deep and aggressive ROT) going back decades. Here's a bulletin for 1995-2000 frames that had aggressive rot. The entire Tacoma and Tundra communities swore up and down between 2005 and 2007, that Toyota knew the frames had rust rot issues and made changes to the frames to keep them from rotting out so fast. You would think that after that stretch of widespread rust rot (or the stretch going back into the 80's when Toyota Pickups were rust rotting in the exact same way), they would make certain that their frames wouldn't rot out in 5 years. But over the course of 30+ years, Toyota did nothing but try to avoid being forced by the NHTSA to recall frames by issuing service bulletins and limited service campaigns (the LSC's were also extremely limited in the time owners had to have their frame inspected and in what states the LSC was valid in, which was limited to less than 20 states).

 

Between 1990 and 2010 I drove mostly Toyota and Nissan trucks and SUV's, so I have a whole lot of experience with Japanese frame rot. The Nissan's rotted slightly slower than Toyota's. Both start off slow but rot out extremely fast. At one time I was primarily interested in either an F-150 or a Tundra. The Tundras had rust rot and axles issues. The F-150 I was interested in had a ton of issues with 5.0 Coyote knock and 3.5 EB timing chains. So I bought a 2014 Silverado and protected it like I would a Toyota frame. I still had 90-95% of the factory wax on my 2014's frame when I traded it in May despite only washing my truck twice a winter right in the heart of the rust belt.

Edited August 11, 2019 by HondaHawkGT

[ickyoldman]

Can't disagree with anything you have said here..... I don't think anyone is doing a good job on their trucks right now.  It's like they realize the are going to sell them no matter what they do so why bother to make a better product?  It's cheaper to just put out a mediocre product.