2013 Ram 3500 "Service 4WD System"

I posted this in the 911 forum but I know most of us don't go there a lot I need a little help guys. I'm moving my DRV form New York to Florida with my 2013 Ram just turned out 52K miles. Everything was great until this morning. At 62 MPH I got a Service 4WD System message. While I was trying to figure out what was happening it cleared. I stopped at the next pull off and nothing out of the ordinary under the truck. So I thought it must be a computer fluke. Fast forward about 3 hours, and I get the same message and this time it stayed on for 5 minutes or so and there was a distinct rumble in the drive train like it was trying to engage 4WD and something was not synced up to speed. I was not engaging 4WD, its not raining and I have been on 4 lane for the last 800 miles. I've never goten this message before. Just as mysteriously it cleared and the noise stopped. I called some Ram Dealers on my route and Lake Norman Ram in Cornelius NC said they could take a look at it. So I dropped my DRV (at Golds Gym its getting too fat), and left it with them on Friday afternoon at 2:30. Only code they pulled was something like front axle disconnect range switch. Any ideas? If some one is local I might need to move my trailer too.

 

comrade - on my previous 16 2500 gasser, the battery started going south after 1 year, and i began to receive random error messages . all at unrelated times and driving situations...the same as yours, along with service ABS system or something to that effect. good luck. cheers!

 

I had the same thing happen a year ago, it was the front axle disconnect like the code you got. Had it replaced and no more issues.

 

R

 

If your in a bind and need to keep going, get it where it is acting normally and then disconnect the axle disconnect wiring. Hopefully it defaults to last position (not spring loaded). Then disconnect the transfer case motor wiring. The truck will not be too happy but I believe it should work.

 

Since I have had my truck new I have gone through 5 of these actuators. Replaced on average about 1 per year. I give up on these things. My last one was a few months ago, I'm at about 72K, and good since then. These actuators have the control module built into them, and that's probably what's going bad all the time. I can't figure it out, and they just keep replacing them. Can't really figure out if anything is causing this or not. Always seem to happen on a long trip. Weird.

 

Well, after the dealer said they could get me in on Friday and didn't. I returned on Saturday morning and they couldn't promise me they would get me in on Saturday either. I decided to just go forward and finish the trip to Florida. I did get one more "Service 4WD System" on a particularly nasty bump in South Carolina but, other that, it performed as expected. I'm convinced that the noise I may have heard the second time it did it may be just me rolling down the windows to listen and hearing the road vibrations from the broken interstate we have around here. Not really sure there is anything wrong other than what TDikerson says above, position switch on the CAD.

 

I've posted this previously in a similar thread but it bears repeating.

I've had the 4wd serv error last fall, it was intermittent and a couple of times I heard a sound similar to what you describe. In my case it was the actuator and it was shorting due to water intrusion, the found a damaged water seal on the harness and replaced both and the error cleared and has not come back. BUT, I recently did a lube service on the truck which included both diffs. The front diff had a lot of metal shavings in it. Luckily I'm at just a tick over 90K miles so still under powertrain warranty. When they pulled it apart they found the collar the actuator moves was worn badly on the splines in it and the spider gears were also damaged by some of the chunks that got free. So I would recommend pulling the cover and checking for any unusual wear metals in there once you get everything else sorted just as a final check.

Note: It generally was not raining when I got the faults, it was due to the water that had gotten in during rain though.