Monster-Ram Upgrade: Power, Protection, Performance

00:00 You know what I mean? This is this is craziness. I don’t understand how you would engineer something like this knowing that that could be a possibility. But there should be nothing on the end of a a motor that could get loose and then go into the motor, if that makes sense.

00:20 There should be no parts that could break loose and go into a motor. I’ve never heard of anything like that before. And these trucks cost a pretty penny for, you know what I’m saying, that type of stuff to to happen. It’s almost like they engineered it to happen

00:34 so that you would either have to go back to uh Ram or whatever and buy a new motor or buy a new truck. What’s good, grind schoolers? It’s your boy Rob, and we back in the shop today. So, today what we got going down is, man, we are going to fix the grid bolt situation

00:51 with uh my truck. Um, it’s a common failure point on the fifth gen 6.7 liter Cummins diesel uh motors where the bolt on the grid heater relay or whatever it is um breaks off and bounces around in the motor um and it causes the motor to fail. And unfortunately, um, if that happens, the truck is pretty

01:15 much a total loss. Um, if I lose the motor, because I can’t, me personally, I don’t have the equipment to actually work on the truck. Like, I work on my cars and stuff. I can’t just put an engine hoist onto the motor and and pull the motor out and all that kind of

01:31 stuff. You actually have to pull the cab off of the frame of the truck to get to the motor. And obviously, I ain’t got no lift and I don’t have equipment to do that. So, this is something that’s detrimental to um my truck that needs to get fixed. It’s a design flaw with the

01:44 Ram 2500s and 3500s. And it just sucks that, you know, they would build them like that and continuously build them like that. And then when your motor blows up, it’s just like, oh well. You know what I’m saying? Tough tough luck, kid. So, anyways, man, we’re going to

02:02 work on the truck today because I can’t have that, man. I can’t have, you know what I’m saying, my motor blowing up and all that kind of stuff. Um, so what I did was I bought the Banks Monster Ram intake. Um, it should give me a lot more torque. Um, it should give me a little

02:17 bit more power and all that kind of stuff. Um, I heard that it makes the truck a little bit more responsive. So, not only is it going to fix the flaw that Ram done put out or Chrysler, whatever you want to call it, um, put out for these trucks, but it also fixes

02:32 or also gives me performance as well. So anyways, man, I’m not going to talk too long. I just want to get to work on the truck. Um, so that’s what we’re going to do and hopefully we can get this thing done today because I want to feel what it what it feels like to have the truck

02:47 more powerful. So anyways, man, I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to set up I’m going to set up my table. I’m going to get the hood open. I’m going to start taking things apart. But before I do that, go ahead, hit that like button, hit that subscribe button, and yeah,

02:57 let’s get into the video. All right, y’all. Banks is the truth, man. Uh, and I wish this was a sponsored video, but it’s not. But they got I’ve never seen a company that gives decals that are um that are not like, you know, just a sticker. This is a sticker, but it’s one

03:18 of them plastic stickers that says Banks. Also comes with a license plate cover. Uh, I would use this, but uh, I have one of those tenant license plate covers, so I ain’t gonna use that. But this is the meat and potatoes of this video. Now, I wanted the red one um

03:39 because my truck is black and it has all the red accents and stuff like that. Uh, but the red one um wasn’t going to get here until May. It wasn’t going to get here until May. I think it was going to get shipped. Um, and that was just shipped. it wasn’t to my doorstep. It’s

03:55 now um I guess in retrospect I could have waited cuz I did have to wait for this for a little bit, but um I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to get my truck um situated ASAP because um I don’t I’m not going to I’m not going to spend 26 grand for a new motor if this one blows. Uh, the truck has

04:18 currently 43,000 miles on it. And um, yeah, I saw somebody in the fifth gen group say that their motor blew um, at 43,000 mi. Uh, number six cylinder, which is where the bolt goes into, um, had failure and it was the grid heater relay failure, all that kind of good

04:39 stuff. And mine is right at 43,000. Not to say that every truck is the same, but I’m not taking no chances. Um, and then I also I got hell damage on the truck. Um, so I did upgrade to the um 2023 uh hood with the hood scoop. So that’s why, you know what I’m saying?

04:58 This has a hood scoop. It’s actually a 22. Um, and then the truck that I did order was actually a Larie, but I ended up getting this one cuz it was a little bit cheaper. Uh, and I should have stuck with the Laramie because it had a sunroof, it had leather seats, all the

05:12 whole nine, all the bells and whistles. But I’m happy with my truck. So, you know, tomato tomato. But we’re going to go ahead and install this bad boy and, you know what I’m saying, get it done. Uh, it’s not too too hot today. It’s about 68°. So, you know what I’m saying? I am

05:28 in the sun, but it’s not too crazy hot. So, I’m going to go ahead and start uh taking things out. I’m going to set it all on the table. So, I have everything laid out. All the parts that I take off, I lay it all out so it all goes back together really good. And then, yeah, we’ll go from there. All

05:45 right. So, first things first is we got to start taking things apart. We got to get this out of there. Um, I’m going to take the EGR off with the, um, intake. And then, um, I guess I’m going have to take this off. Well, no. I could take this clamp off without having to take that off, I think. Um, I

06:09 got to find all the clips. I’m trying I’mma try not to break anything because like any of these plastic clips because you know what I’m saying like I don’t want to have to try to replace anything. But um let me go ahead and start un or taking things apart and then once I take

06:27 everything apart um I’ll show y’all what it looks like. This is my first time doing this so I don’t really know kind of you know what I’m saying what I’m doing but you know what I’m saying. Banks uh gives you the instructions so that you can follow along and then you

06:42 know what I’m saying. We’ll just see where we end up. So, let me start taking things apart. All right, y’all. We were able to get this out. We’re obviously going to have to transfer all these parts to the new one, but for now, we’ll just leave it like that. But look at all that carbon buildup. It’s

06:60 like, man, oh man. Yes. Um, bank sends you comprehensive instructions. I’m not going to go over how to do this because this is a lot. You got to actually take out a lot, remove a lot of bolts and stuff like that, but Banks makes it real simple, real easy. Um, and yeah, so anyways, um,

07:26 yeah, that’s what we got to get to down there. This plate, we got to get that out. Um, so we don’t have a failure, man. Um, so there’s a bunch of bolts that we got to take off. We got to take off them fuel lines. They tell you to take this off, but I don’t really know

07:42 why. You know what I’m saying? You could just move it out the way. Um, because all you got to do is get to this plate, get those fuel lines out, get that little uh fuel rail, lift it up, and take all this stuff off. Uh, like I said, I’m not really sure why you got to take off so much, even stuff

08:02 on that side of the motor. Um, I guess I’ll find out in a second. But, um, yeah. I mean, I don’t know that you need to do that. So, like I said, I guess I’ll find out here in a minute. Um, but for now, let me just keep working. Uh, forging ahead. I’mma take off these fuel

08:19 lines. And then, um, actually, I’mma take off that rubber piece first, and then I’mma start taking off these fuel lines. take these bolts out, try to lift up this uh fuel rail, and then uh we should be able to get to this plate and take that off, and then we should be

08:33 able to start putting everything back together. So, let me go ahead and do that. Um I’m going to cover up this boost tube uh with a rag. It says to cover it up with a rag, so I’m going to go ahead and do that. And yeah, try not to mess anything up. So, let me keep working, keep forging ahead and uh

08:51 hopefully have this thing uh done here pretty quick. Um it’s rain everywhere, man. I had I got to stop due to the rain. So, now I got to, you know, try to uh knock this out cuz I need my truck. All right, y’all. That was a lot of work, but finally got this thing out.

09:16 This is what we’re trying to replace. This little bolt here. Stupid design flaw. I don’t understand why they would make a uh failure point like that where a bolt can fall into the motor and tear the motor up. Stupid. Stupid. You know what I’m saying? Like there’s engineers that

09:38 aren’t mechanics that they try to engineer these trucks to or cars and everything to do whatever they want them to do. And they try to engineer them to the standards of the government and EPA and all that other extra stuff. But man, it’s so silly how they do these

09:59 things. But whatever, it is what it is. Not for me to, you know what I’m saying? Try to figure out. But we got it out. We got all the caps on. I didn’t put the cap on the number five um the number five injector or fuel hose or whatever you want to call it. Um because it’s way back there and it’s

10:18 hard to get to. Um and then number six, you don’t take number six off as far as um the fuel hose goes in the back. Um you just unhook it from the fuel rail. And unfortunately with trying to get number four off, I had the wrench like this and I push it and the wrench came and

10:42 smacked this. This was my only mishap, the fuel sensor. I cracked the top of it. Um, I didn’t crack like the parts where it clips in at. So, it should be okay like plugged in. Um, and if not, I just replace it. I just looked it up. It’s unfortunately $100, but you know

10:59 what I’m saying. I didn’t mess up anything else, uh, fortunately for me. Um, but I’m going to go ahead and clean off the surface because they say if you don’t clean the surface, then you’ll have air passing through. But I’m going to go ahead and clean off the surface

11:15 and I’m going to vacuum it out um to the best of my ability, like all of that EGR, dirt, dust, everything. We’ll try to get all that cleaned up and then we’ll start putting everything back together. All right, y’all. So now we got to transfer all of this old stuff to

11:35 the new stuff. So right now I got um this and I’ll probably put another one down here. I got the gasket sitting um sitting setting up. Got some gasket maker on the other side. Um trying to let it tack up so that it uh it holds on there nice and firm. Um, it said to use

11:56 some spray adhesive, wait 3 minutes or whatever, but I don’t have spray adhesive, but I do have a gasket sealer, so that should work just fine. Um, and then after that, we got to transfer the uh I think air heater or whatever that’s called onto this one. And then

12:15 everything on here like the EGR and the rest of these sensors, they got to go on the banks joint. So, uh, I’m going to start transferring this stuff over to that one right now, uh, while this is all setting up and everything. I don’t know how long this is going to have to

12:32 dry, um, because it’s not the spray adhesive, it’s the gasket sealer. So, um, I’m going to leave it like this for a minute and I might not even, uh, get to finish this today. Um, I might just go ahead and cover up the port that this goes over. and um call it good today cuz

12:53 this was a lot of work just to get everything off and done. But you can see the size difference between this and this and look how restrictive that is. And I know everybody that has made a video on this particular thing um has said that. But you know what I mean? This is this is craziness. I don’t

13:11 understand how you would engineer something like this knowing that that could be a possibility. But there should be nothing on the end of a a motor that could get loose and then go into the motor, if that makes sense. There should be no parts that could break loose and go into a motor. I’ve

13:31 never heard of anything like that before. And these trucks cost a pretty penny for, you know what I’m saying, that type of stuff to to happen. It’s almost like they engineered it to happen so that you would either have to go back to uh Ram or whatever and buy a new

13:48motor or buy a new truck. You know what I’m saying? It kind of that’s what it kind of seems like. You know what I’m saying? Because even still to this day, knowing that that is a possibility and knowing that that happens, they still engineer it like this. They still sell

14:02 the trucks with this grid bolt heater thing. You know what I’m saying? And there was already a an issue with this grid volt heater with the trucks catching on fire. And instead of engineering something different, a different design, they just replace the the the relay and you know what I’m

14:23 saying, called it good. So it’s like, okay, cool. Either my truck’s going to catch on fire or I’mma blow the motor. You know what I’m saying? You pick. So I’m glad that I I was, you know what I’m saying? um doing my due diligence and I figured this out before it was

14:37 catastrophic failure because I would have been pissed. You know what I’m saying? And my truck doesn’t have a warranty on it no more because we’re out of warranty. So, you know what I’m saying? They probably would have been like, “Tough luck, kids.” So, but anyways, let me go ahead and uh finish

14:51 up and um I’m going to try to go as far as I can and uh put everything together. That rain really kind of messed things up pretty bad. But you know, it is what it is. You know, uh we got everything apart. So, and now we’re just letting this set up and you know, we’ll go from

15:12 there. All right. Um progress being made. Pretty much got almost everything back together. We just got to start plugging everything up. We got the um fuel lines in there. They’re not that difficult going in. Coming out. They’re a little bit tough. Oh no. They’re a

15:30 little bit tough because, you know, of how tight they were. Um, I got a little bit of a mess on my hands. I’m going to clean all that stuff off. But yeah, not too difficult of a job. I probably say maybe a 6 out of 10. The only thing you got to be careful of is not to break

15:45 anything. If you got an older truck, it might be a little bit more challenging because parts are a little bit more brittle, more fragile. But, you know what I’m saying? on a newer truck. This is not too bad of a job. So, um I’m getting closer. I’m not all the way

16:00 there yet. Like you can still see some things unc or disconnected. I still got to connect the boost to. Um one thing I will say is there’s a bolt that goes straight down through the banks um that I was kind of, you know, weary about or not weary about. I didn’t know that was

16:17 there. Um but the instructions say that I was a little confused. But um and also to the instructions, I would say they’re 98% accurate. Um when you take off the EGR, it tells you to put thread locker on there and put that on there. You don’t even have to put the EGR on here

16:34 um right away because you have to put the plate on. So my recommendation is put the plate on um or wait to put the EGR on and then put the EGR on I guess afterwards or last or whatever. But you know, most of it is pretty decent. Um, but I’m about to finish everything up.

16:52 I’mma tighten it up. We’ll start the truck and see what’s going on. All right, y’all. So, everything is in there nice and installed. Everything is plugged up. Um, I’m going to go ahead and start the truck up. Uh, it says about 1 or 2 minutes for it to start. We’re going to check everything, make

17:10 sure there’s no leaks, make sure that everything works as intended. Um, we’ll warm the truck up and then we’ll go ahead and uh take it for a test drive. But let me go ahead and start the truck or try to start the truck and then I’ll uh see what it what it do. This is what it sounds like trying

17:28 to start up. I guess the fuel has to pressurize. So there it goes. So I’m going to let everything uh sit for a second. I’m going to warm the truck up and then after the truck is warmed up, make sure I have no leaks, then I will go ahead and Yeah, I don’t smell any diesel fuel

17:53 or anything, so should be straight, man. Um, I don’t have no leaks in my exhaust right here. Um, she sounds good. I’m let her warm up. It’s nice and quiet. I don’t hear anything that doesn’t sound out of the the norm or anything like that. So, I’m going to let it warm up all the way and then we’ll

18:20 see see what happens. All right, you guys. Uh I I’ll say that there’s actually a lot more power in this truck. It actually spins the tires a little bit, sets you back in your seat a little bit. You can definitely feel the difference, man. Um, we’re on the test drive now and

18:41 I could feel a major difference in the throttle response. Um, before it was a little bit laggy. Um, like when you would hit the gas, it would take a second to get going. Um, also too, you know what I’m saying? You could definitely tell that there’s a little bit more power. I think it’s supposed to

18:56 give you like 30 more horsepower or something like that. Um, don’t quote me on that cuz I don’t know 100%, but I think that’s what I read. Um, and yeah, you could definitely tell a difference. Not even gonna front, man. Uh, I’m definitely happy with, you know, the purchase. Like I said, I would have

19:12 rather had the um the red one, but it is what it is, man. I’m just Oh, man. Yeah, you could definitely tell the difference in the power, man. Like, this thing gets up and goes. These trucks are already fast as it as it is. Um because of, you know, the torque and the turbo diesel and all that kind of

19:34 stuff. You can kind of hear the turbo noise a little bit more. I uh want to get an air intake. I want to upgrade the boost tubes and I want to tune it and you know do the other thing that you’re not supposed to do. Uh I think that’ll probably give me about another extra 100

19:49 horsepower supposedly if I did all that. you know, like I’m not racing a truck or nothing like that, but it definitely helps to have more power out on this road, especially when you need to get up and go, make a turn or you need to, you know what I’m saying, get up and go and

20:04 get out in front of somebody or something like that that’s trying to be stubborn and not let you over. It definitely makes a huge difference. So, um, like I said, man, I’m happy with the purchase. Uh, I was more concerned and I I did it more so for the fact of uh I

20:21 did it more so for the fact of that grid bolt inside the uh inside the uh uh intake or whatever it is. I don’t want to destroy my motor. So, anyways, man, it wasn’t that difficult. Like I said, probably about a a six out of out of 10. um with difficulty. It took me longer

20:42 than I I had anticipated because I had got stopped by the rain and then it got dark last night and it got cold. So, you know what I’m saying? I had to continue on the next day. But, you know, we got it done. Uh we only broke that little plug, which you know, it’s not that big

20:57 of a deal. Um it didn’t break the part that clips in and it didn’t um if I got to replace it, I just got to replace it. It is what it is. I was just more so concerned about any leakage or anything like that. But um we about to go ahead and turn it on in y’all. I hope y’all enjoyed the video, man.