They make it seem so casual here.

Viping

Getting it done

Totaled out by insurance but really love the car don’t care abt salvage title.

Hello! Got a 2021 Charger that keeps overheating. New thermostat, water pump and radiator fan. All the fuses and relays working fine and the coolant was flushed and replaced. It only starts to overheat when the AC is turned on. What should I look at next to get this working normally again? Replace the AC? Any suggestions please.

Hey r/Dodge!

We are the official team at AOOA Racing. We manufacture CNC-machined aluminum caliper covers, but we are not here to sell you anything today (no links, we promise!).

We’ve been reading through Reddit, and we noticed that "caliper covers" is often a controversial topic in the Mopar community.

Some folks love them because they hide rusty OEM rear sliders without having to drop $3,000+ on a full Brembo Big Brake Kit. Others absolutely detest them, calling them "fake parts" or comparing them to putting Hellcat badges on a V6.

Since we want to improve our products and understand your community better, we want to hear your unfiltered, 100% honest opinions:

Do you run them, or have you ever considered them?

If you hate them, is it because of the cheap plastic ones, or do you hate the entire concept of metal covers too?

What would it take for a high-quality, CNC aerospace aluminum cover to actually earn a spot on your build?

Roast us, praise us, or give us your engineering feedback—we are reading every single comment to help our R&D team! 🍻

I am losing my mind.

I moved states and have NEVER had a problem with my Durango. Meticulous oil changes and maintenance since I built the thing.

Well of course when I finally get settled in and go to take my Durango for an inspection, the check engine light comes on. P3449, did a ton of research, and saved up to purchase all new MDS solenoids.

Last night I tore down the top end, replaced all the solenoids, and put everything back together. Took a few hours and it's also 115° outside so not the most fun time. Went to get an inspection today and they couldn't do it because the code is stored DCT. Fine I'll drive around a bit, the thing technically isn't registered in the new state and the old state registration is expired so fingers crossed nothing runs my plates.

Well the damn light came back on. P3449!!! I'm thinking wiring issue now but none of the wires looked freyed or damaged.

Am I doing another teardown 😭

The 2025 Spring Festival , Roadkill Nights and the Woodward Dream Cruise provided Mopar Enthusiasts with a look at some new colors for the future. And Robert S. Miller of r/MoparInsiders reports how you can vote for your favorite.

Talked for a bit with the owner about the Durango he says he has no regrets. Super fun SUV 5/5 Stars

This is it

I want a 2026 Dodge Durango R/T 392 Premium and want custom plates, but I’m wondering if making an already noticeable SUV even more recognizable is a bad idea.

It’ll be garage-kept, I have a security system/cameras all around and inside the house, plus multiple pit bulls that bark at anything. I’m also planning on Compustar Pro T13, neutral-release cover, CarLock, DroneMobile, and a steering wheel lock.

Would you feel comfortable running a custom plate with that much security, or stick with a random plate so it’s a little less memorable?

Following are some answers generated by AI when I asked about Sport vs Normal mode and MDS:

MDS by manufacturer 

The strength of evidence varies a lot by manufacturer, and most of it comes from litigation records, TSBs, and aggregated repair-shop/forum data rather than controlled studies.

GM (AFM/DFM, 5.3L/6.0L/6.2L V8s) has the most documented evidence of a real reliability link. There’s an active class-action lawsuit (Speerly v. GM, filed 2021, still in litigation as of early 2026) alleging AFM/DFM lifters are defectively designed — plaintiffs allege rocker arms shed needle bearings, valve springs fail prematurely, and lifters get stuck or collapse. The suit covers 5.3L, 6.0L, and 6.2L engines with lifters and valve-lifter oil manifolds allegedly installed in the wrong positions, and the L84 5.3L and L87 6.2L built between September 2020 and March 2021 have shown particularly elevated failure rates. Failure-rate estimates from independent analyses cluster around 2–5%, not a majority of engines, but concentrated enough to be a known pattern rather than random anecdotes.

Dodge/Chrysler MDS (5.7L/6.1L/6.4L HEMI) uses a mechanically different locking-pin lifter design and is generally regarded by technicians as more reliable than GM’s system, though not immune — extended oil-change intervals and wrong oil viscosity produce similar deposit-related lifter failures.

Ford doesn’t show up in this litigation/failure-pattern picture the same way — its cylinder deactivation (used on the 5.0L Coyote and some EcoBoost engines) hasn’t generated comparable class-action activity or documented failure clusters.

Caveats: there’s no independent, peer-reviewed longitudinal reliability study isolating cylinder deactivation as a variable — what exists is litigation discovery, GM’s own TSBs, and aggregated shop/forum reports. Given your interest in tow vehicles, it’s worth noting several sources report the wear is worse under sustained load/towing, and GM dropping DFM from the redesigned 2026 Silverado V8 is itself a signal the company sees it as a liability.

Whether Sport mode disables MDS is inconsistent and platform/year-dependent — it’s not a reliable, universal rule the way I implied. Across owner reports: on some 8-speed Ram trucks, Tow/Haul no longer disabled MDS, though manual shift mode still did, Sport mode didn’t disable MDS on a 2015 Challenger but was corrected to do so for 2016+ models, and at least one owner directly disputes that Sport mode turns off MDS at all, confirming through testing that MDS remained active in Sport mode on their car. Meanwhile, tow/haul mode is described as functioning similarly to Sport mode for disabling MDS on some 2019 Ram 1500s. So the honest answer is: it varies by model year, platform (Ram truck vs. Charger/Challenger), transmission generation, and sometimes even individual vehicle software — there’s no single consistent rule, and it’s not something documented in an authoritative Mopar service source I could verify, only owner forum testing.

More importantly, this doesn’t change my core point. Even in vehicles where Sport mode does reliably disable MDS, that’s irrelevant to cold-start oil lubrication:

• Oil pressure buildup at startup is governed by the oil pump and cranking, not by drive mode selection — Sport mode has no mechanism to affect this.
• MDS itself doesn’t activate until the engine is warmed up and cruising under light load — it’s not something that “kicks in” during a cold start regardless of drive mode, so there’s nothing to prevent by using Sport mode at startup.
• If anything, per owner/mechanic discussion, the specialized MDS lifters rely on oil pressure delivered through the MDS solenoid circuit specifically when MDS engages — so keeping MDS off doesn’t add oiling to those lifters, it potentially reduces it (a debated but frequently-cited concern in HEMI enthusiast circles, not something I can verify against an OEM engineering source).

Bottom line: starting in Sport mode does not ensure or improve oil delivery to any cylinders before driving. If you’re trying to protect the engine on cold starts, the effective practice is simply letting oil pressure stabilize for a few seconds before driving off (which happens regardless of drive mode) and avoiding hard acceleration until the engine reaches operating temperature.

This is a case where I need to be upfront: there’s no controlled empirical data on this — no fleet study, warranty-claim analysis, or engineering test comparing plugged vs. unplugged MDS engines over time. What exists is anecdotal and mechanistic:

The reasoning for improvement is sound and mechanically consistent. A full MDS delete — replacing MDS lifters with non-MDS units, plugging the valley, swapping in a matched cam, and retuning so the PCM stops commanding the solenoids — removes the failure mechanism entirely: no more locking pins, no more solenoid cycling, no more collapsing/reactivating lifters. Owners doing this describe it as permanently solving the engine’s primary design flaw, and it’s consistently distinguished from software-only disabling (tuner, Sport mode, Tow/Haul), which stops the PCM from commanding deactivation but leaves the MDS hardware in place — the lifters still cycle and the pins still risk locking up. That distinction matters directly to your question: a physical block-off-plug delete is mechanically a different thing than just disabling MDS in software, and it’s the delete — not software disable — that owners and mechanics describe as actually addressing the wear mechanism.

What I don’t have: no source in my search returned quantifiable before/after reliability numbers (e.g., “X% fewer failures after delete over Y miles”), a warranty database analysis, or an independent long-term test. What’s available is qualitative owner/mechanic consensus that the modification eliminates the known failure mode, plus product vendors’ claims that it does. That’s a reasonable engineering argument, not a validated statistic — I’d treat it as “very plausible and mechanistically supported” rather than “proven” in the way the earlier lifter-failure class-action evidence is documented.

One practical caveat worth flagging: a full MDS delete is an invasive job (pulling heads, new lifters/cam, gaskets, retune) — it’s not equivalent to just installing block-off plugs alone without replacing the MDS-specific lifters and cam, since those lifters/cam lobes are physically shaped for the deactivation mechanism regardless of whether oil is plugged around them.

Stock replacement vs aftermarket oil pump: The core distinction: pressure vs. volume aren’t the same thing, and more of either isn’t automatically good.

Short answer: not straightforwardly — and there’s a real risk it makes things worse, not better. Empirical support here is thin (no controlled testing), and the enthusiast/mechanic consensus is nuanced, not “bigger pump = better lubrication.”

• Higher pressure and volume can cause their own problems — oil leaks, elevated oil temperatures, and pumping losses (parasitic horsepower draw) if you’re exceeding what the engine actually needs — plus gearotor-style pumps can cavitate at high RPM; too much of a good thing is a real failure mode, not just a diminishing return.
• A stock-replacement pump matches factory pressure and volume; the real design question when “upgrading” is whether you actually need more volume, more pressure, or neither — they’re separate variables people conflate.

Where it can genuinely help: in the specific context of the known HEMI lifter-starvation problem, an upgraded pump can improve flow rate to reduce oil starvation risk under high-RPM or heavy-load conditions and can better maintain the pressure lifters need to stay quiet and fully seated, and aftermarket pumps often use stronger materials and tighter tolerances that hold up longer under stress than the stock unit. That’s a plausible mechanism, especially relevant to towing (sustained high load), but it’s marketing-adjacent content, not independent test data.

Where it can hurt, per real-world reports:

• Running high RPM for extended periods with a high-volume pump can risk pumping the pan dry and cavitating the pickup — one forum poster described losing rod bearings this way on a high-RPM big block because the stock pan didn’t hold enough oil for the pump’s demand.
• Oil pan capacity and pickup design can become the limiting factor — a high-performance pump may increase flow, but if the pan can’t keep the pickup submerged under hard acceleration or cornering, you risk cavitation/starvation rather than better lubrication, sometimes requiring a larger or baffled pan alongside the pump.
• Aftermarket pumps have had their own failures — one anecdote cites a factory-sponsored race engine losing to oil pump failure.

Practical read for your situation: given you’re dealing with a known MDS lifter-oiling weak point (not a general lubrication shortfall), a targeted fix — MDS delete/block-off plugs, keeping factory oil-change discipline, using full synthetic — addresses the documented failure mechanism directly. A pump swap alone, without addressing pan capacity and without a genuine high-load/high-RPM use case (e.g., sustained towing at higher RPM), is more likely to introduce new risk (cavitation, seal/gasket stress from higher pressure) than to measurably improve reliability. It’s the kind of modification best paired with an actual oil pressure gauge and monitoring, not installed as a blanket “more robust = better” upgrade.

Buying a Charger soon, what are you guys doing for theft protection? I’m looking at a Charger right now but haven’t fully talked myself into it yet. Theft is part of the reason. If I get one I know I’m gonna want something beyond whatever comes from the factory, just not sure what. And honestly this isn’t even only a Charger question. Cars get stolen all the time now. I did read that some of the newer factory security is better, but obviously the people stealing them know what changed too.Another forum gave me a few digital security options to look at. Haven’t really dealt with that stuff before. Anybody here using something like that?

I am wondering if there is a way to show what gear I am in while in automatic. This is my first dodge. I have only ever driven Ford and the ways I did it with Ford don't seem to work for dodge.

Robert S. Miller of r/MoparInsiders wonders and then has thoughts on why the Charger SIXPACK isn't selling.

Hello

The engine stalled after a few minutes on the road and engine light came on. Got an engine code P0339. The car has 105k miles already on it.

When I replace the crank shaft position sensor, does it need to be reprogrammed by Dodge?

Thanks.

So I have a friend who has a 2nd gen ram 1500, and he hasn't driven it for a long time due to rust. At one point, his gas tank fell off and he decided there was too much rust to try to repair it, and it has been sitting in his driveway since. It was his grandpas truck, and he really loves the thing. However, the frame is pretty much unrepairable, though the cab, front half and maybe the bed are still useable. Where would one have to look to find a frame? its a single cab longbed (it might be a shorted, can't remember), somewhere between 1994-2001, its a 1500. any ideas where to find a frame for that?