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To make a long story short, I was plowing a parking lot that is very small and limited as to where you can put snow. This is my first year plowing too. Anyway I push the snow behind the building and have to drive off the parking lot to push the snow as far back as I can to make room for future snow falls. When I go to back out onto the parking lot again I usually have to put it in 4H as the rear wheels just spin. Well I over shot the pile of snow and ended up getting the plow stuck on the pile of snow and had to dig out the snow between the plow and the front of the truck. Did that and then went to back out. 2H the rear wheels would just spin. Then I tried 4H and I could put the pedal to the floor and neither the rear or the front tires would spin. It would act like it was trying (slightly rocking) so I know it wasn't the Gear Selector being wrong like we know these trucks can do. I tried it several times and everytime I would end up being able to put the pedal to the floor and the none of the tires were spinning. I then tried 4L and got out.

What could be wrong? Or is this normal like I was overpowering something and as a safety to protect the powertrain it wouldn't allow the tires to try and spin. I was REALLY stuck and to make matters worse the back tires were just up against the edge of the parking lot with is about 3" higher than where I was. Is this a transfer case issue? Torque converter? Trans slipping? ETC? Thanks for the help!

2005 Dodge Ram 3500 SLT Quad Cab 4x4
Cummins Auto
Long Bed Dually

 

Sloppy TC that doesn't hook up and rpm limited to 2100 rpm's with 0 wheel speed. If you can't get a reading on the speedo you can't get enough power to pull it out some times. Thats what 4-Lo is for.

 

Thanks for the reply. So nothing is wrong? Just how the stock torque converter is?

Let me get this straight, If the wheels won't turn after 2100 rpms the truck won't allow it to keep trying to move the wheels? Cause I had this thing screaming at about 3500 rpms and no wheel spin.

 

Yeah, sloppy TC will do that.

So you saw the tach reading 3500 rpm's and the speedo was zeroed? Is the truck stock?

 

Yeah, the truck is stock and yes the speedometer was showing zero. I wasn't moving and the wheels were not spinning. All that happened was it slightly rocked but nothing more.

 

He meant you probably were not quite at 3500 RPM... I think that is what he meant by, are you stock. 3500 is pretty high.

 

That behaviour is disturbing to say the least. Stock redline is 3200, about the only way to go beyond that is downshift at too high a speed. With no wheel speed it should limit rpms to 2100, at least mine did before I fixed it.

Its the TC that causes that when you stick them good and hard. The rest of the beahviour is strange.

 

Yeah I'm not sure exactly what the rpms were as I was watching a lot of different things. It was definatly near the red on the tach though. Just kept climbing as a I stood on the accelerator trying to get the wheels to spin.

I'm at a loss. I really just want to know if something is wrong or not.