Home Forums Gear Hunting Trucks and Four-Wheel Drives Hemi Tick

My neighbor bout a hemi tick truck that was ticking quite loud at 18,000 miles. I know it’s got north of 250k miles now. Still ticks still runs good.

Sounds like a broken exhaust manifold bolt .

That's my bet too. No way a cam would hold up that long if it was a bad lifter.

It maybe less labor COST to replace the engine. Maybe more total money ,BUT you will have a new engine.

It would be just my luck to replace the engine then have the transmission start to slip. I'll replace the truck before the engine.

The $6,000.00 in engine repair won’t add $1.00 to the value of the truck.

You would be better off putting the $6,000.00 toward a trade and get a different truck. It may cost you more than you planned before the ticking sound, but it isn’t worth the $6,000.00 to fix it…

I understand the economics of it. I looked around for a replacement truck and found extremely low inventory that would result in me overpaying by a higher margin than the costly repairs. Either way I'm hosed it would seem. I considered leasing a new vehicle but Suze Orman has my wife brainwashed.

I had an independant mechanic conduct the inspection and repair. He decided to remove the exhaust manifolds, heads, valve covers, abd intake manifold. Turns out I had only one broken exhaust manifold bolt. The lifters and cam have little to no wear on them. He said the inside of my engine is cleaner than most he has torn down.

The dealership is full of bullcrap!

While at it just replace the cam and lifters. Pretty cheap for replacement and labor won't be any more.

Glad it worked out for you. Most dealers are a sad story these days.

Dinny, did they pull the engine or do that in place?

The engine stayed in but alot of other things were moved or removed to make access easier. The inner fenders/wheel wells were even removed. I stopped by today and helped torque down the head bolts. It's going together quite nicely and everything is cleaned and degreased. Almost looks like a new engine. I bet it will run like one. The mechanic wants it back next week for a few hours. He plans to check for leaks and change the oil. He seems to go the extra mile compared to some I've dealt with in the past.

I got the truck back today and it runs like a top. This mechanic went above and beyond. It runs and rides smoother than ever before. He replace upper ball joints, wheel bearings, and a sticking rear brake caliper. The engine looks cleaner than the day I bought it and I have to watch my speed. The Hemi like to race. No ticking or knocking of any kind. I still have the original cam and lifters. They weren't showing any sign of wear beyond what one would expect for 120K miles.

Good to hear it worked out for you! HEMI's tick. Keep the oil fresh and try not to idle her and I'm sure she will last another 120K.

The 6.4’s have issues with excessive pushrod angle and if not properly maintained will wear out the lifter valley and/or the cam and lifters.
My work has a contract and has changed their entire fleet over to Dodge 4500’s starting in 2015. We’re a national company so it’s literally thousands of trucks. In my general area of about 200 trucks we have had 20-25 trucks get engine replacements due to this issue. All have been replaced with Jasper engines.
My Jasper has 12k on it and is currently back to the shop for misfiring. Jaspers says they’ve had issues with bad valve seals on their engines which cause oil in the cylinders. Mine was so bad it is fouling the plugs in 2 cylinders….

Other than that it runs great….


But these are commercial vehicles, and a good example of what happens when not being maintained properly and excessive idling(truck has to run when the boom is in use(my boom has 1000hrs on it!).

I had an 2010 Ram 1500 that loved to break exhaust manifold bolts, I had the bolts replaced twice on the passenger side (new manifold the 2nd time) and the drivers side once but it was going to need them replaced again. I sold that truck to a friend and told him all about the issues I was having, gave him a good deal on the truck and he was happy to drive it away. From what I understand, Ram has not even attempted to fix the issue with the 5.7 and exhaust manifold bolts continue to break to this day.

Too much emissions hanging underneath these things. Get rid of huge factory mufflers, cats, resonators and such and you wouldn't see near the breakage of bolts.

Betting even just swapping the factory muffler for a smaller performance muffler would lose 20 pounds.

Some engines are prone to the manifolds warping with heat. The Nissan VG30 engines were particularly bad about it. Removing the manifold when replacing studs and gaskets, and having it machined after it has been heat cycled many times would be a permanent fix.

Agreed, that was the plan on my 2010 Ram before I ended up selling it.

Seems GM 5.3/6.0’s do it quite a bit as well. I have 3 or 4 busted bolts currently on the lq4 in my truck.

Almost funny how diminutive the bolts are. Wonder how much dissimilar metals and different heating/expansion rates along with the small hardware play a part in it? IE - aluminum heads and iron manifolds.

My brother just spent $15k on a new engine and transmission for his 2013 Ram 1500 at 305k miles. The lifters and camshaft stated ticking at 275k miles. It's still a nice truck and was going to be $55k to buy a new one.