kthflieger
Member
What I've learned about my 06 2500 in the last 18 months:
Dealerships: For the most part, if I needed a dealer to work on my rig, I was using Landmark Dodge on the south side of Atlanta because they had a very knowledgeable service writer and kept a sprinter Tech on staff. However - I began to question the how savvy this tech was after being told my AC was in perfect shape even though it was losing R12 every 3 months and the Pinion bearing was making lots of noise but that was only because I was "unfamiliar with the amount of noise these make". (threw the BS flag on that one).
Took it in to have the condenser replaced and the pinion bearing replaced under an extended warranty, and after having it for 4 weeks, they replaced then entire rear axle, replaced the condenser, dropped a nut into the cooling hose which then shelled the water pump as I was driving it off the lot, shorted out my driving light switch and reversed the door unlock switch and fast idle switch plugs.
It really got funny when after two more visits the tech couldn't figure out what he had done wrong. He did replace the water pump under the same extended warranty!
It took them another two weeks to fix the water pump and try to diagnose the electrical problems. After I got fed up, I attacked my dash board with an ohm meter and in less than 5 minutes figured out what was wrong and fixed it.
The look on the service manager's face was priceless when I returned with everything working and presented him with a bill for my time. We settled on $300 worth of oil changes.
When I took it back to Landmark for one of those oil changes, after sitting there for over 2 hours I was curious to find out what the hold up was.....turns out they "ran out of the right kind of oil".........WHAT???
Needless to say I would never recommend that dealership to anyone for any reason.
Brakes: Recently I towed a friends trailer which I found out had been incorrectly re-wired. When I hit the brakes it shorted out my brake lights, blowing the fuse. I learned that when that fuse blows, the computer sees a problem and lights up the brake warning light and ABS fail light. I replaced the fuse, but had to have the expensive OBD reader reset the brake warning and bring the ABS back on line...........who knew!!
Lessons learned
Dealerships: For the most part, if I needed a dealer to work on my rig, I was using Landmark Dodge on the south side of Atlanta because they had a very knowledgeable service writer and kept a sprinter Tech on staff. However - I began to question the how savvy this tech was after being told my AC was in perfect shape even though it was losing R12 every 3 months and the Pinion bearing was making lots of noise but that was only because I was "unfamiliar with the amount of noise these make". (threw the BS flag on that one).
Took it in to have the condenser replaced and the pinion bearing replaced under an extended warranty, and after having it for 4 weeks, they replaced then entire rear axle, replaced the condenser, dropped a nut into the cooling hose which then shelled the water pump as I was driving it off the lot, shorted out my driving light switch and reversed the door unlock switch and fast idle switch plugs.
It really got funny when after two more visits the tech couldn't figure out what he had done wrong. He did replace the water pump under the same extended warranty!
It took them another two weeks to fix the water pump and try to diagnose the electrical problems. After I got fed up, I attacked my dash board with an ohm meter and in less than 5 minutes figured out what was wrong and fixed it.
The look on the service manager's face was priceless when I returned with everything working and presented him with a bill for my time. We settled on $300 worth of oil changes.
When I took it back to Landmark for one of those oil changes, after sitting there for over 2 hours I was curious to find out what the hold up was.....turns out they "ran out of the right kind of oil".........WHAT???
Needless to say I would never recommend that dealership to anyone for any reason.
Brakes: Recently I towed a friends trailer which I found out had been incorrectly re-wired. When I hit the brakes it shorted out my brake lights, blowing the fuse. I learned that when that fuse blows, the computer sees a problem and lights up the brake warning light and ABS fail light. I replaced the fuse, but had to have the expensive OBD reader reset the brake warning and bring the ABS back on line...........who knew!!
Lessons learned
