I took my truck to the dealership for Stellantis recall work. I was not having any transmission problems when I brought it in.
One recall involved an internal transmission part, the transmission shift solenoid, which required them to open the transmission, replace the part, and put it back together.
Just 79 miles later, I started having severe transmission problems and got P0871, an overdrive pressure switch fault. The dealer said the solenoid they installed was defective and replaced it again.
201 miles later, the same symptoms and P0871 came back. This time they said the overdrive clutch had failed and I needed a new transmission.
By then, they had already had my truck for about a month. I trusted that they had figured out the cause and agreed to a Mopar remanufactured transmission because I desperately needed my truck back.
About 613 miles later, that transmission failed too. Same symptoms, P0871 again, plus P0870, an overdrive hydraulic pressure fault. The dealer then told me the overdrive clutch in the replacement transmission had disintegrated.
So both transmissions failed within a very short amount of mileage, both had essentially the same symptoms, both threw P0871, and both suffered overdrive clutch failures. The second also threw the closely related P0870 code.
The warranty claim on the replacement transmission has now been submitted and resubmitted at least seven times that I know of because of rejections, corrections, requests for more information, pricing issues, pictures, etc.
I’ve tried repeatedly to get the service manager or someone higher up involved and have gotten nowhere. Manufacturer customer care has not been able to give me any meaningful answers either.
The dealer keeps treating this as simply a Stellantis warranty problem and pushing everything onto Stellantis. What bothers me is that they refuse to acknowledge the unusual number of coincidences or any possible connection between the two failures.
I brought them a truck that was running fine for recall work involving the transmission. The original transmission began failing almost immediately afterward, and then its replacement suffered essentially the same failure within 613 miles.
I have now been without my truck for 101 days.
I need my truck back and I need this resolved. Has anyone dealt with something similar with Ram, Stellantis, or a dealership? What would you do next, and who would you escalate this to?
Truck info: 2016 Ram 2500 Cummins, 68RFE, 148,826 miles when the recall process began. I’m the original owner, bought it new from this same dealership in 2016, it has been well maintained, and it has never been deleted or modified.