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brandonjansen - 2012 Ram 3500 Laramie Limited Cummins Build Thread

168K views 969 replies 75 participants last post by  brandonjansen 
#1 · (Edited)
Well the day finally came where I got my Cummins :SHOCKED:

A bit of my story:
I've wanted a Cummins ever since I was 14 or 15 years old... they were always just so cool and I got the bug that I needed to build one. So it essentially became my dream to do that one day. Obviously it's not something I could afford right out of highschool, especially since I went to college right away, so that was put off. So that brings us to the point where I bought my 2012 Ram 1500 SXT (that many of you have seen). At the time when I bought it that was a huge purchase for me. I had just started a job with my new company so I didn't want to dig in too deep before everything was a little more routine and normal for me. Well since then I've been promoted and gotten a few raises so the Cummins bug was back at me again. I started looking on and off for the right deal to pop up. I wasn't overly serious about making a move but the option was definitely there. Well finally searching Craigslist one day this 3500 fully loaded Laramie Limited popped up and I knew I had to take a look. Well one thing led to another and bam! Now I own it.

For me this is everything I wanted in the truck to start with. It has every option I could think of, the right colour, Laramie Limited, 2012 (no urea junk)... it is essentially the start of my dream truck. So I'm very stoked about it. I figured now was the time to get into a truck like this before I'm overwhelmed with other bills later in life and won't be able to afford this truck. At least now I have the truck and I can slowly mod it as money comes in.

Numbers:(remember, I'm in Canada)
Since I already know a bunch of you are going to ask what numbers I got in the deal I might as well post them now. I ended up negotiating with them on my truck as a trade in to what I consider a decent price considering what it was. I paid $25,500 10 months ago and have put about $10,000 into it since then. With the trade in value and tax savings because of it, it worked out to about $30,500 for my truck which I'm fairly happy with. Considering the depreciation of the truck I got a fair bit back for my mods.

Now for the new truck. The window sticker on it was $76,000. They had it listed for $70,000 on the lot and I got them down to a final price of $60,000. Again, I'm fairly happy with that deal as well considering everything the truck has.

Sponsorship:
This truck and myself are now sponsored by Bully's Performance. The majority of the parts (everything possible) that I want to put on this truck will be supplied by Bully's. I can't say enough about both Andrew and Jeremiah. They are incredible guys to work with and provide exceptional customer service. If anyone needs anything for their truck (even if it's not listed on their website) give either Andrew or Jeremiah a shout at sales@bullysperformance.com. They will help you find what you're looking for and give you the best pricing possible. Very stoked to have these guys supporting me on this build!

24hr Review:
Well so far I've had this truck for about 18 hours and it has been amazing! HUGE step up from my base trim 1500. The ride is incredible, a lot smoother than I expected for a 3500. The interior is immaculate and so well done. The features that it have literally blow my mind. Last night my dad and I just sat in the truck for an hour or so messing around with things and finding out what they all do both amazed at some of the features. The Cummins is amazing, more power and torque than I know what to do with at the moment. But I have huge plans for it, so things will come.... Overall I am 100% satisfied with the purchase of this truck.

Mod Plans:
I definitely have tons planned for this truck in my head already. Overall this will be a much slower build than my 1500 just because of the cost of things and warranty issues. But here are some of my short term and long term mod plans.

Short Term:
Remove mud flaps - complete
AntennaX 7" billet antenna - completed
Remove running boards - within a few days
Remove intake baffle - within a few days
LED license plate, reverse, and cargo lights - within a few days
Bakflip G2 Tonneau Cover - will be ordered right away
Rough Country Leveling Kit - within a few months
Boost and Pyro Gauges in A-pillar mount - within a few months
S&B intake - within a few months

Long Term: (at the moment)
8" or 10" lift, not sure what brand yet
22x11 Fuel Krank wheels
40x15.5 Toyo MT's
H&S Performance Tuner
EGR delete
DPF delete
4" MBRP turbo back exhaust

Obviously I will think of other mods as time goes on... there will be lots. Everything will be updated in this thread.

Pictures:
And finally the part everyone wants to see.... At the moment I only have a few iPhone pictures, but once I have some time I'll get some with my T3i








And a picture of me with my old 1500 SXT and my new 3500 Laramie Limited. The 1500 is quite a bit closer to the camera, that's why it looks so much bigger.... But for a brief period of time I owned both these trucks. Very happy to be driving away in the Cummins though ;)
 
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#159 ·
Awesome. And why are these things not already installed lol. I wouldn't have been able to sleep with a tuner in a box lol.

Atleast you still have both of your convex mirrors. My driver side one on the 3rd gen fell off and broke. Dodge doesn't sell just glass and the one place I found on here wants 140 plus tax for a 3" by 3.5" mirror
 
#161 ·
Awesome. And why are these things not already installed lol. I wouldn't have been able to sleep with a tuner in a box lol.
Haha I wish I could have installed them, believe me. But for one, I can't run the custom tunes without the DPF deleted so I need an exhaust first. I probably could run the stock H&S non-delete tuning for now but I think I'd rather just wait until I can delete everything. Plus it comes back to the whole wanting to get more miles on the truck before deleting. I'm at about 5300km now and I think I want to have around 10,000km on it before I delete. That way I know it's good and broken in. So for now the tuner and EGR delete kit are safely put away on a shelf in my closet :doh:

Atleast you still have both of your convex mirrors. My driver side one on the 3rd gen fell off and broke. Dodge doesn't sell just glass and the one place I found on here wants 140 plus tax for a 3" by 3.5" mirror
And my convex mirrors are bigger than yours too :gy: lol.

That sucks that yours fell off. I'd be choked if that happened! You haven't had those tow mirrors for very long either have you?

Looks fantastic good luck with everything.
You won't regret it
I'm really looking forward to it now that I have some of the stuff. It makes it harder to hold off on the install for a while. lol. In a few weeks I'll order up an exhaust and then I'll be good to go with everything. Should be deleted by the end of December. :smileup:
 
#176 ·
This past week my Cummins decided it needed it first oil change (at about 5500km). Wasn't too stoked on that seeing as it's supposed to go up to 12,000km so it didn't even make it half way. But seeing as it's the first oil change and the engine needed to break in I guess it makes sense. The EGR valve doesn't help anything either. The oil was definitely as black as it could be and smelled like diesel.

Normally I would just bring it in to Mr. Lube to get the oil changed but I called there and it was going to be at least $120 plus tax. I figured I could do it myself for about half of that. So I ran down to Costco and got a case of Castrol Diesel oil ($47.00) and then to Lordco and grabbed a K&N oil filter ($16.00). Got home, pulled the truck into the garage and started working. I read on Cummins forum that it's a lot easier to get the filter off if you take the intake off so that was my first move. Not too big of a deal but getting the CCV tube off the intake was a bit of a pain. The clamp was in an awkward spot to get off. However, I won't have that problem any more as I blocked off the CCV on the intake so it won't be putting it's own fumes through the turbo.

Then came the fun part.... pulling the drain plug. Out of the 20 or so times I have changed oil I have never had this happen to me (however this was my first diesel oil change). I pulled the plug and all 12L of that oil was coming out right now! It hit the bottom of the drain pan and literally started spraying everywhere. There was nothing I could do at that point so I just crawled out from under the truck and let it go. By the time it was done there was definitely a couple liters of oil on the ground....

Getting the filter off was also a task.... Apparently Cummins hasn't heard of the one hand tight rule because that thing was on there ridiculously tight! Plus I didn't have the right size filter wrench so I had to go run down and grab one from the store.

Anyways, she's all back together now and running clean. Just thought I'd share my Saturday story with you guys. Needless to say, next time Mr. Lube is going to be doing it. I don't feel like cleaning up that much oil again :LOL:




 
#184 ·
Just an FYI if you change your oil you may want to go with the Dodge / Mopar factory filter oil filter they will crucify you if you don't have there filter and you have some big issue with the engine even tho I have the deletes I still use there filters, also same thing happened to me when I changed my oil the first time but I also ran out of room in the oil pan didn't realize how much oil the trucks take.
 
#177 ·
You have a very attractive truck, Brandon! Of course, I am bias on the color. ;)

The build is coming along nicely.. can't wait to see it lifted in whichever way you choose to go for now. I had mine leveled in the front and would love to lift her about 3-4" but am reminded how high that would be every time I (try) to get in. :LOL:

EDIT:
Hmm.. it seems you already have lifted. LOL! I didn't see a mention of it in your thread here, but caught it in your signature. Looks good! Are you pleased with the current height and ride? Or are you going higher in the future?
 
#178 ·
Thanks KA1OTE! I definitely do like the colour as well.

I don't have the 3500 lifted yet. Right now it's still at stock height. The links in my signature refer to my 1500 that I had before this truck.
Right now I'm working on some performance mods for the Cummins. It probably won't be until next year or the year after that I actually get it lifted. I might end up leveling it and putting 35's on it in the spring just to make it look a little better until I go full out. But eventually it's going to get an 8" lift and 37's or 38's.
 
#179 ·
Ah, yes.. upon closer inspection, it does specify 2012 1500 mods.. doh! :doh:

Well, it's looking good still either way!

I'm stuck with 20's since I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to get into my truck if I lifted it at all. Still, a nice selection of rims in that size so I'm not totally left out.
 
#182 ·
Ya that's true. All I really need is a deeper drain pan or just add a shield to this one. Maybe use a bucket instead. Either one would work. But ya, definitely don't want to be cleaning up that mess again. Lol.

wait... back up.. What are these deletes i keep hearing of? What the heck even is an ERG or whatever? haha
Well first off, they apply to diesels not gas trucks so you don't really need to worry about it. But I'll sum it up for you.

When Cummins came out with the 6.7 in 2007 they knew what the new EPA standards would be for diesel engines by 2010. So all 6.7's have more emissions equipment on them than the old 5.9's did. The 07-12's have the EGR valve, CCV recirculation, and DPF filters in order to meet those standards.

EGR Valve:
Or exhaust gas recirculation valve. It essentially takes exhaust and puts it back over into the intake. The purpose of it is to reduce NOx (oxides of nitrogen) by keeping the combustion temperatures lower. The problem with them is that all the soot and crap from your exhaust is now running back through your engine. It coats everything in soot, blackens the oil, all that. Not good.... Getting rid of it will allow the engine to breathe much better and cleaner and make more power since it will be running on only air and fuel rather than exhaust. You also get better MPG by not running it.

DPF Filter:
Or diesel particulate filter is a filter in the exhaust meant to catch all the hydrocarbons, soot, and all the other contaminates from the exhaust. That's why you will never see a stock 6.7 blow black smoke, the filter catches all of that. He problem is that over time the filter clogs up and the exhaust can no longer flow through. To take care of this the truck goes in to regen mode and essentially dumps raw fuel down the exhaust to burn all the contaminates out of the filter. Obviously that is a huge waste of fuel and you lose power at the same time. But deleting the filter you allow your exhaust to breathe much better and it will no longer go in to regen mode and waste all that fuel.

In order to complete both an EGR delete and DPF delete you need a tuner that will support deletes to clear the engine codes that would come up (and put the truck in to limp mode) if you just took the parts off with no tuning. There are a number of options of different tuners to run. All of them have different pros and cons but that's a whole other subject.
By doing the deletes and running the tuner I chose I should gain about 4-5mpg fuel economy and 125hp/365ft-lbs running on my street performance setting. Plus the engine will be be running much better and cleaner extending it's maintenance intervals and overall engine life.

CCV Delete:
This one you don't need a tuner for. I've already done it on my truck while I had my intake off yesterday. All it is is the vent on the top of the valve cover being routed in to the intake (crankcase ventilation). That ends up sucking oil and crap into the turbo which is not something you want. So I just disconnected the hose (I will get a breather for it eventually) and then plugged the whole in the intake.
 
#188 ·
Oh oil changes.. just making a mess everywhere sometimes.. Especially with that much oil.. I gave up on those and pay $10 at my uncles shop for an oil change.. They even pick it up, give a quick wash and drop it off for me :LOL:.

Glad you got that small delete done.. 1 step closer to making it even more of a beast. And when getting the first oil change, It is never as long as it usually will be.
 
#189 ·
Definitely can't complain about $10 oil changes!! My filter alone cost me more than that. lol.

Ya I was happy to get that one delete done. I figured I had the intake off so I might as well do it. Gave me a chance to clean up the intake a turbo with some good cleaner as well before it got too oiled up. The only concern I have with it now is the pipe that I left open is directly on top of the turbo. So if any oil does accumulate in it and decide to drip out it's going to land on the turbo. It should just sizzle off no problem though. I'll order up the breather kit for it next month and then it will be fully taken care of.

Unfortunately that's how it goes. Especially on a Cummins with an EGR and DPF still on it. It should be a bit better now because the rings will be sitting better so less fuel and soot will be getting past them. Then hopefully the next oil change will occur when it's fully deleted so then it will be MUCH better. Should go 15-18k no problem.
 
#196 ·
Sick New truck! I like it. I am thinking of going with a 4" lift and wheels or trading in my 1500 for a 2500.... Ill have to wait for the price drop in a month.

I like your Bakflip looks good.
 
#197 ·
Sweet man! Can't go wrong either way. Just keep in mind if you're looking at trading it in for a new 2500 Cummins there aren't currently any ways to tune or delete them if you're into that side of modding.

Thanks for the compliments! :smileup:
 
#200 ·
I dive a yard mule at work and it has the DEF in the exhaust. Seems to me that it doesnt have the power of my old mule I had. But it does come with cold ac and heater, but who needs a heater in Texas. Also a cb, am/fm radio. makes the time go by faster.

Ill be looking for a 2010/2011 or a project 2nd generation.
 
#202 ·
Brandon are you running 35's on your new truck now?

How are those toyos on the pavement/road sound? road noise, humming, any of these?
 
#203 ·
I will quickly answer as I know the answer.. The 3500 is still stock tires.. He had the Toyo's on his 1500. I am running the same tires.. They are actually great on pavement. They are obviously louder then stock, but that is expected.. But overall I find they are a very quiet tire for an M/T.
 
#216 · (Edited)
My city is literally on the border. The exit I take off the highway on my way home from work is about 3km up the road from the Sumas boarder crossing. So it is fairly easy for me to cross.



Blue dot is my house, Hwy 1 (yellow road) is obviously the trans Canada highway, and the red line is the border. The company I get all my parts shipped to is about 500m past the border.
 
#218 ·
So I went to install my tuner into my truck this weekend to use as a gauge monitor for now and ran into a few pretty large hiccups. The first one being that the overhead mount is a bit of a pain to install. In order to get it in the right place I needed more slack in the wiring that goes to the rear view mirror. In order to get that slack you have to drop the whole front of the headliner. Then it's a pain to get up in there with snips to cut the ties holding it in place. Finally got all the done, got the mount in place, then realized I couldn't tilt my mirror high enough to see anything. So I ended up having to take it back out and slowly grind plastic off the top of it so I would be higher up against the headliner. After an hour or so of screwing around (I'm OCD and made sure it fits perfectly, lol) I finally got it in. Then I finished up wiring everything underneath the dash which was fairly easy. Found keyed power at the brake light switch on the pedal and just tied in to that. Then the most disappointing part of all. Plugged the tuner in, went to turn the truck on, and the tuner is NFG. It cycles through the H&S logo, then the MiniMaxx logo and then shuts off and just repeats that over and over. It never actually starts up and gets to the main screen. So I emailed Dave at Draconian Diesel about it already knowing what his reply would be and sure enough, I had to talk to H&S about it. So this morning I talked to H&S and let them know what was going on and they have no issues replacing it under warranty. Which is good (and what I would expect) but it's definitely a pain in the ass. Now I have to pull the wiring back out of my truck and box it back up and then pay to ship a product back to them so they can send me one that actually works. Not so pleased about that but what can you do?....

I could post pictures of some of what the mount looks like installed but I figure I'll just wait until I have the new tuner and everything working before I do that. So you're all going to have to wait :gy:
 
#221 ·
At least you found this out BEFORE you installed everything else and made it to where you needed the tuner to drive your truck.

One small problem avoided a much bigger headache.

Note to self... Install tuner first... then other parts later. :smileup:
Ya definitely sucks but as Arth said, definitely a good thing that I found out now rather than later when I actually delete it. It really would have sucked if I would have been set to install everything and then find out the tuner was no good. That would have made me beyond pissed. lol.

Haha, well I can't show pics of something that's no complete. The overhead mount just looks so bare and wrong without the tuner in it. I'll tell you what... I'll let you see the little video I took to send to H&S showing what the tuner is doing. It gives a bit of an idea at least. On the video the tuner isn't sitting up in the mount properly, that's why it looks a little funny.



Yes Arth I'll definitely be making sure the tuner and custom tunes are all working before I install the EGR delete and exhaust. As soon as I get the tuner back from H&S I'll put it in as a gauge monitor so I'll be able to make sure that side of it is working.
 
#220 ·
At least you found this out BEFORE you installed everything else and made it to where you needed the tuner to drive your truck.

One small problem avoided a much bigger headache.

Note to self... Install tuner first... then other parts later. :smileup:
 
#222 ·
A few new updates and pictures of the truck

After the issue with the MiniMaxx last weekend I had a few things to deal with during the week. I called H&S Monday morning and let them know what was going on with the tuner. Right away they agreed that it was most likely a faulty tuner. They agreed to send me out a new one with a packing slip enclosed for me to ship out the faulty one. I was pretty happy with that. It arrived Friday already so I went down, picked it up and plugged it in to see if it would work. At first there was a bit of an issue with the SD card. It wouldn't accept the SD card from that faulty tuner that has my custom tunes on it. So I put the new one that came with it in and then it started up no problem. Everything works 100% so I boxed up the old one and shipped it out.

Then the next issue I ran in to... which is 100% my own fault and not a big deal. But it was kind of funny once I realized what I did. To install the ignition wire that powers on the MiniMaxx I didn't want to run a wire up to the fuse box. First of all I think that's a pretty dumb way to install it and I hate the idea of that messy install of having a wiring running into the fuse box like that. So it got under the dash with a test light to see what had keyed power and would stay on when the engine cranked. Didn't take long and I found one on the brake pedal switch. Used a wire tap and got power no problem. Well it wasn't until I plugged in the new MiniMaxx and started driving until I noticed that the tuner shut off every time I hit the brakes. Right away I knew exactly what I did. There were two wires with keyed power on the brake switch. One is a feed and one turns off when you hit the pedal which must trip a relay to turn on the brake lights. I obviously hooked it up to the wrong one :doh: So I felt kind of stupid but at least it was a super easy fix to get it working.

The install of the rest of the MiniMaxx stuff was fairly straight forward. Running the HDMI cable up to the overhead mount was no issue at all. The hardest part was getting the slack in the wiring going to the rear view mirror in order to get the overhead mount in the right spot. I had to drop the front of the headliner in order to get it done right. The other issue I had was the overhead mount itself. It's definitely not made 100% perfect. First off it didn't fit the contours of the headliner as tight as I would like. Then once I had it in I realized there was no way I could get my rear view mirror angled high enough to see everything. So out came the sharpie and I started marking where I needed to grind away the mount. I spend a couple hours last weekend marking it up, grinding parts off and then going back to the truck to see how it would fit. Definitely took some time but I've very happy I did it; it fits great now.

I have a few things to figure out with the SD card and custom tunes which I'm going to work on as soon as I'm done with this post. Hopefully that all goes well. Then next week I'll probably be ordering the exhaust system to get everything deleted :SHOCKED:

This afternoon we actually had some good weather so I took a couple hours to detail the entire interior of my Ram. First gave the entire interior a good vacuum. Then I used Mcguiars Leather Conditioner on all the seats and leather accents within the truck which worked very nicely. I hadn't used it on this truck yet but I'm very happy with how it turned out. Then went over all the plastic with Mcguiars Interior Shine and Protectant which also works very well. Isn't ridiculously shiny like some products, just leaves a nice clean black look to everything. Then of course a quick once over on all the windows with a good glass cleaner (forget the name at the moment). Overall I'm very happy with how it looks; made me fall in love with the interior of the truck all over again. lol.

Here are a bunch of pictures I took after the detailing this afternoon. The pictures don't even do it justice. The interior is just so nice in this truck.









Obviously in the pictures of the MiniMaxx I had just started up the truck to get the pictures. Otherwise that pyro would be WAY to cold. lol. With just having it on for a day or so and trying to take a look when I can the numbers I'm seeing are pretty good. It's been peaking at 32 psi of boost, and 706 ft pounds of torque. Pyro is normally between 450 - 800 degrees (but that sensor is down far in the exhaust) and the rail pressure is between 4000psi and 18,000 psi. Nothing out of the normal so that's good. It will be interesting to see where the numbers are at once it's tuned and deleted.
 
#227 ·
Thanks bud! I definitely do like the all black interior. So clean and classy looking.


Ordered up the next mod for the truck today. The final piece of the puzzle to get things thing deleted, loud, and powerful. I ended up going in a different direction than originally planned. The more and more I thought about it I figured it wasn't worth the money to buy a kit with a muffler because I'm 90% sure I want to keep it straight piped. And if not I'll probably just want a resonator not a full muffler. So I did a little more digging to find different kits and decided to go with a Flo Pro 4" Turbo Back Stainless Steel kit with no bungs and no muffler.



Unfortunately the guys at Bully's weren't able to get any Flo Pro products so I had to go else where. I found the kit for the best price at a company called Performance Truck Products and started reading up some reviews on them. They seem to have good feedback from all the diesel guys so I figured I'd give them a shot. So far I can't complain about them at all. Very competitive pricing and a very good selection of products on their website.

I also ordered up a 5" dual walled stainless steel tip from them to go with this kit. Ended up going aFe for that because I didn't want any logos on the tip like the MBRP ones have. Again, very good price from Performance Truck Products for this tip.



I'm hoping the exhaust will show up next week sometime and then it will just be a matter of throwing it on there. Not sure if I'll do it next weekend or end up waiting until I hit the 10k km mark first.... We'll see how things go. I'm getting pretty sick of my truck doing regens and watching my fuel mileage plummet plus I definitely want it to be louder. Time to start waking up the neighborhood when I leave in the morning and come home at night ;)
 
#229 ·
Ya I'm pretty stoked to get this on there. For one it will sound great and two, it will be peace of mind for me to have it fully deleted. I won't have to worry about it idling too long and clogging up the DPF and all that BS which is a big thing for me now that it's getting colder and I remote start it all the time. Plus the better fuel mileage will definitely be easier on the credit card every month.

I didn't mind the MBRP logo as much as some of the other companies. I just like the clean look better. With this truck I want to keep everything as clean and tight looking as possible.
 
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