We put the new 2025 Ram 1500 and its 3.0L twin-turbo I6 on the TFL Truck Toaster hot weather towing torture test. It does really well, but then this happens… Let’s dig in!
The TFL Truck Toaster is slow mountain climb that is about 8 miles long with an elevation gain of more than 3,000 feet and an average speed of 20 MPH. The top elevation of this test is over 8,500 feet above sea level. Half of this route is paved and the second half is dirt. It’s a winding mountain road out of Boulder, Colorado that leads towards the historic town of Gold Hill. The speed is slow, the trailer is heavy, and the temperature is hot! If any truck survives this test, it means it is very tough and will handle the toughest of conditions under heaviest of loads.
We discovered this test by accident. One hot day in the summer of 2021, we were pulling a relatively heavy trailer with a new Chevy Silverado 1500. It was nearly 100F ambient temperature. We were moving two side-by-sides to a mountain trail for a video shoot.
There is not a lot of air moving when you are climbing this road, and the Silverado’s transmission got dangerously hot. We had to stop for around 30 minutes to let it cool down. The TFL Truck Toaster was born.
Since then we ran eight trucks on this test, and three of them had problems.
This new 2025 Ram 1500 is equipped with a 3.0L twin-turbo straight-six Hurricane engine that is rated at 420 hp and 469 lb-ft of torque. It’s mated to a ZF 8-speed automatic transmission. It is equipped with a max. towing package. It has large towing mirrors and a 3.92-to-1 rear axle ratio to deliver maximum power to the ground. The trailer weight is around 10,500 lbs – which is very close to this truck’s 11,000 lbs maximum trailer rating. The ambient temperature is between 95-100 F.
This new engine and truck deliver a great performance until we stop at the very top of this mountain. We get a low oil pressure warning when I put the truck into Park. We did not lose any oil. It appears that hot temperatures and the low idle rpm after this test caused a sudden drop in oil pressure. The new engine oil itself is already “thin”, and it may be stressed further by the hot temperatures. We saw oil temps around 250F.
It’s worth noting that we have seen higher engine oil temps on Ram 1500 trucks that are equipped with a 5.7L V8. The new Hurricane engine managed to keep the oil temps around 250F.
Take a look at the video below for all the details.
