General 99 Ram thread

[Adam]

I'll pay $100 for that Ranger.

[kevm14]

Bill is foaming at the mouth that I ask if you are serious and if you would pay an actual price, "like $300" (his price, not mine). You do have a house now...

I said $100 is your standard "I don't want that" price.

[kevm14]

Right now the only unready OBD-II tests are O2 heater and the cat efficiency. With two unready tests, I may already pass emissions. I don't know the year cut off for when more tests are allowed to be unready and still pass.

http://www.riinspection.org/overview.htm

3. (a) For 2001 and newer vehicles, more than one readiness monitor in a vehicle's on-board computer is not set as ready; or

(b) For 1996-2000 vehicles, more than two readiness monitors in a vehicle's on-board computer are not set as ready.

I knew it! I should be all set!

[kevm14]

The Ram requires a new policy to be written. Supposedly the policies are linked in a way where at least my multi-car discount should apply. The problem? The 6 month policy premium is $368!!!! Recall from the insurance thread that the Ranger is like $100. Apparently they charge another under/uninsured motorist premium - at $109, it is basically the same as I am paying for FOUR cars on my original policy. Ok, so even if you subtract that, it still comes to $259 which is still 2.5x what my Ranger costs to insure.

Other than this, they may remarket my stuff and see if someone can do everything under one policy and the idea is that would be cheaper.

A 5 car policy is actually even more than this from another carrier. If I wear my tin foil hat, I'd say they didn't try very hard to shop around, or, not many carriers do 5 cars. That would really be a bummer actually. If my plan with the Maxima turned out differently, I would have tried to insure 5 cars like 3+ years ago and maybe ran into this. I may actually still call a couple carriers independently since I don't trust my agent on this particular issue.

So, the best thing to do I think is stick with who I have and do a 3/2 car split, which by my math only saves $30 from what is quoted above. I guess I will put more emphasis on the truck transition. Adding a 5th older vehicle was supposed to be cheap and it isn't as cheap as I'd like it to be. I mean, when it costs as much as the CTS-V or SRX with full coverage (and the Ram has no collision), that really rubs me the wrong way.

[kevm14]

In the interest of transparency I will expose my idiocy for everyone's entertainment.

The new quote for 5 cars is actually substantially cheaper. Why? It is for 12 months rather than the usual 6. Yes, I forgot to divide by 2.

In summary:
- Paying $957/6 months now for the Caprice, Ranger, SRX and CTS-V.
- Adding the Ram with the existing carrier would have put my 6 month premium at like $1300, which is why I went down this path in the first place
- The 5 car quote I just got (from a different carrier), is $1,531 for 12 months, or $765.50/6 months. Yes, that means it is $200 CHEAPER every 6 months for 5 cars than I was paying for 4 cars.

Much better. Only some small concerns at this point before I switch:
- My umbrella policy was through the car insurer. I may have to switch unless they can sell just an umbrella policy (and maybe it goes up a bit so I need to run that down)
- I don't recognize the name of this new carrier, so I don't know if I am giving anything up (like if something actually happens - kind of a reputation and customer service question)

[kevm14]

- The 5 car quote I just got (from a different carrier), is $1,531 for 12 months, or $765.50/6 months. Yes, that means it is $200 CHEAPER every 6 months for 5 cars than I was paying for 4 cars.

Eh, they quoted the CTS-V with no collision for some reason. Based on comparisons (and similarity on my current carrier) that will probably put the 12 month premium around $1,750 for 12 months which is still a savings of $100/6 months to cover 5 cars instead of 4. Just not as far ahead as I thought. Put another way, instead of costing me $350 to insure the Ram, it is saving money instead.

On the other hand, right now, the CTS-V only needs comprehensive, so my annual insurance cost is less. But that applied to the previous carrier anyway.

[kevm14]

Trip computer is down to 11 mpg. LOL

This is looking considerably worse than my Caprice for my commute. Last two days there was 20 minutes of traffic at the gate though. I will track trip vs calculated on Fuelly.

And I might put some Techron in there, though the fuel trims looked great when I checked.

Still no check engine light.

The fan clutch is still annoying as hell and is not helping fuel economy. Just don't know when I'll feel motivated to actually track down the right replacement and install it. Speaking of motivation, I really should replace the passenger side mirror that I bought. There were two styles and I am running out of return time with Rockauto if I got the wrong one. Probably should do the driver's side as it has a vertical crack in the glass that is annoying. And who knows, they could fail me for that on Saturday.

[kevm14]

Trip computer is down to 11 mpg. LOL

This is looking considerably worse than my Caprice for my commute. Last two days there was 20 minutes of traffic at the gate though. I will track trip vs calculated on Fuelly.

Got gas. 14.4. So maybe my expectations of an accurate trip computer from my GM experience doesn't apply to Dodge.

[kevm14]

Looking for caps. Found this:
http://providence.craigslist.org/ctd/5953055239.html

Thing is really clean. No leather. Cap. 2WD. Similar miles. They want 5 grand.

[kevm14]

The door jamb sticker says it is supposed to have 225/75-16XL tires. It has 245/75-16. Maybe that is why the speedo is slightly low - it may have read high stock and the larger (optional) tires corrected it. I will have to check the odometer.

Checked the odometer this morning using the trip odo since it has tenths. The truck registered 16 miles and I had traveled 16.2 according to GPS. Which is a 1.25% error on the low side. Which is...not much and clearly not the cause of the mileage reading being way off. 1% is on the order of 0.2 mpg at the mileage this truck gets.

The only thing a little interesting is that with bigger tires, it is mostly right on. According to Tirerack revs/mile spec for a Fuzion SUV in both sizes, the speedo/odo should be 4.1% low with the bigger tires. But both are around that same 1.25%. If it was way off I would have considered going back to the stock size (years down the road obviously) but may as well keep the 245 size.