Hi,

A friends truck caught fire a couple of days ago. It's a 2003 Ram 3500 Diesel Dually. The fire originated up under the dash and was contained to the area just under the steering column. Fortunately they were by the truck when it started and got it extinguished immediately.

Just wondering if this is a widespread problem or a confined incident. Did some searching on the NHTSA site and have come up with nothing.

Will appreciate any feedback.

Thanks in advance,
Randy

 

Was the truck stock or were there modifications? Where in the dash? Details always help. I've not heard of a single fire in Rams before this.

 

Anything is possable but in my 25 years in automotive every dash fire I've seen was eaither a mod or delibrate.(vandals)but who knows.A good fire adjuster will figure it out in short order.The 1/2 dozen or so I was involved end the cause was always found in usually pretty quick.Usually radio connected stuff.

 

Truck is stock with no powertrain modifications. The only exception of it being a stock truck is a satelitte radio with the gps display was added, the radio has never worked correctly.

Fire was located close to the steering column, if you were sitting in the truck it would be to the left of the steering column. Lots of control cables and the speedometer cable in the area.

The fire department stated that it was started by a short circuit. It is in the insurance peoples hands now, we'll see what they have to say. Just wanted to verify that this isn't a widespread problem.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

Did your friend constantly adjusted the tilt steering? Possibility that some of wiring was being chaffed by the tilting which eventually created the short.

MikeyB

 

Bingo, that could be it!!! Every single time that she gets in and out the wheel gets moved from one extreme to the other!! Man, I would never have any thought of that possibility.

Will update once a cause has been determined.

Thanks for the reply.

Randy