Hello I have a 06 ram 1500 4x4 trx4. Wondering what fails on these 4.7 engines. I have 235,000 on mine and it has a knock sensor picking up a knock and can’t tell if it’s a CD piston slapping or a timing chain problem. Wouldn’t mind doing a timing chain but really don’t want to change the whole engine at this point,lol. Anybody have any experience with this? Thanks
With that many miles, the oil has been changed regularly. These engines tend to sludge. It's the design on the PCV system. Where I used to work, one of the guards had an '03 with a major rattle from the engine and the salvage yard offered him $300 for it. I offered him $500 as I figured I could either fix it or part it out and not lose money. The guards barely made minimum wage so he could use the extra bucks.
The pan was sludged as heavy as I've ever seen on a running engine. The oil pickup was completely plugged. I got about 4 pounds of crap out of the pan. I did a bunch of other work on this truck. I put a new thermostat in it as those give trouble too.
I didn't have any issues with them, but the heads tend to crack too. Once I got the engine taken care of, I replaced the radio that would ponder if I was WORTHY of listening to music, did a little body work to repair the rust over the rear wheel well openings, it turned out fairly nice. I'm not a body man so my attempts at body work were covered up with fender flares.
It turned into a pretty decent truck and a contractor bought it to use as a service truck. A little deluxe for a work truck to my mind, but money talks. I think after what I did and spent on the truck, I made about $17. However, I helped a good guy out, got a piece of equipment back on the road and learned a lot about the second generation Magnum engines. After the pictures were painted, I sprayed some silver paint on the lower rockers. I think the truck had been repainted once and they missed part.
If you need more information, try over at dodgeforum.com There are people over there with MANY years experience with these and other Dodges.
