New RAM's look good!

It has terminator eyes!

Crawled under the one in the showroom... look at the weights mounted on the framerails of the 1500's... one on each side..

So they shaved 30lbs of weight off the new frame design and then they have to add that?

Why would they do that? Too light in the rear?

TheQuig wrote:

Why would they do that? Too light in the rear?

Noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) is the reason. By adding weight to an object you change its resonate frequency. At a certain speed/rpm etc they might have experienced a vibration or drone and this take care of it. This approach has been around for decades. I recall having to install similar weights on convertible Buick Reattas at the dealer for vibration issues and on other cars we had a weight to hang off the exhaust intermediate pipe. Then there was the RWD Roadmasters with a 2.56 axle ratio that would have a drone issue @55mph while lugging along at 1400rpm which required a frame stiffener at the rear of the frame rails.

Plus I don't think those are positioned at the rear. Looks like the trans cross member the are in line with.

Wow, you would think those things would be fixed in the developing and testing stages! But I guess they were, hence the factory weights.

You know the engineers were not happy about adding those.
They go through all the hassle to shed weight and in the end they have to hang those big cast weights back on.

They are mounted on rubber. You can move them quite easily.

Diesel Dan wrote:

You know the engineers were not happy about adding those.
They go through all the hassle to shed weight and in the end they have to hang those big cast weights back on.

Exactly, it looks like a hack job. With today's computerized modeling and testing, added weight could be integrated with thicker frame areas etc. I can't recall seeing anything like that on either of my dmax's.

Computerized test models don't show everything, yet.
That is why they still need to have test mules. It was much cheaper to add the weights then do a redesign of the frame rails at this point. The next refresh will not have those weights would be my guess.

We are talking Fiat here, not exactly known for quality in America. Hopefully that has changed, but with their financial problems in Europe it may not happen soon enough.