A friend of mine has a 2009 Dodge 2500 that he bought new. The gentleman is in his sixties and has never used any type of aftermarket tuner or performance accessories. Oil changes have been performed at the dealer since day one. The truck is his grocery getter and toy hauler. The turbo just failed after 27,000 miles. At first Dodge said it was from "lack of maintenance." That lasted about 1 second when he produced all of his maintenance tickets FROM the dealership. Then they said it was from "lack of use." Are you kidding? The turbo failed from "lack of use." HAHAHAHA???? What????

They ended up replacing it under warranty and told him that it had "clogged up" from lack of use. They told him he needs to load the motor up more or buy a gas truck. This truck hauls a skid steer, cattle trailer and camper. He asked the service manager just what exactly he needed to tow/haul that would "clean the turbo." I guess the service manager did not have a good answer.

They are trying to find any reason to wiggle out of fault for the bad turbo.
More likely it was just some sort of defect it had from day 1 and finally reared its ugly head. Stuff happens. But instead of owning up to it they are trying to push blame onto the owner. Which is pointless because they warrantied the turbo anyway..soo why?

Geez...got to love dealerships! I have heard of the 6.7 needing the turbo cleaned cause the 6.7 runs soooo sooty with its heavy EGR.

He should pull off the EGR system.
It will stop fouling the engine with soot and get better fuel economy.

you don't have to remove it, just turn it off with a tuner, problem solved

http://www.hsperformance.com/xrt-pro/

the dodge egr system is poorly designed

http://www.mycarlady.com/2010/01/29/dodge-6-7-diesel-class-action-lawsuit-filed/

There is some truth to the loading it up, the less it's worked the worse off it is, but Dodge is being petty.

It's possible that his 09 has an old style turbo. They made some revisions to the turbo to make it so the sliding nozzle part doesn't seize up with soot. Also make sure he has the J35 recall done and he should be up to date with all the programming.

Possible DPF malfunction? I did hear if the 6.7 DPF equipped Ram Cummins motors aren't worked hard regularly that they can clog-one of the reasons I bought a used 5.9 instead.

Not to be political, but the vast number of Dodge dealers are pretty clueless when it comes to diesels. I had to travel to dealers outside Cincinnati to get easily diagnosed problems fixed under warranty on my '02 (bad injection pump/VP44), fully half the dealers here got purged in the bailout.

Remember the wonderful '70s and '80s as OEMs struggled to meet new emissions regs and car buyers did the R&D? This is the modern diesel owner's equivalent period.

You got that right. I work in a fleet of medium and light duty diesels and we are going back to gas for the light duty, with the increased cost for diesel engines we wont break even till 90,000 miles and most units never see that.

I think this service is a epidemic for Dodge dealerships and their maintenance department's. At least from my experience, I do not know if this was from Daimler's cooperate style or what but from my experience with Dodge dealerships this is more normal behavior rather than the exception. The other theory I have on this is a lot of Dodge franchise dealership owners are tools. I do not like to paint with a broad brush but this is from my experience with Chrysler.

They ARE tools!! If you find one that has a clue, be sure and use them for everything and try to keep them around. The problem with the bad ones is not only do they have no clue on diesels at all, they will try to charge you "diagnostic fees" when they can't figure out what's wrong!

Mmmmmmm.....
There may be a hint of truth to the "low use" factor, but overall I doubt the solution would be to "load the motor up more". The 6.7L Cummins does not use SCR/Urea Injection. Therefore, they rely heavily on EGR to control temps and emmisions. Running the engine on a "heavy load" will only make it consume even more EGR, in stock form.

Now, the "low use" factor has a small bit to do with it. Whatever soot/carbon is in the turbo will have more time to "solidify" and get caked/coked/stuck/etc with long down time periods. My neighbor's sick-point-oh PSD has had 3 (three) turbos replaced under his extended warranty. He went through a period of low use from being out of work, and it promptly stuck that turbo twice. Of course, a large contributing factor to that is also the poor EGR/oil cooler heat exchanger set up, which just exacerbates the problem. He has replaced many components, added a coolant bypass filter, and now drives it to work every day. No more problems. So, yes, there may be a tinge of truth to the "low use" contributing factor, but if Dodge thought that was a true issue, they should have to call it out in the warranty statement; they don't, so they cannot fall back on it. (And, that would scare away a lot of part-time diesel users like me, too). My Dmax sees mostly intermittent use, but I've not succumbed to a stuck turbo (not a problem that plauges the Dmax).

In general, it's clear the dealership was trying to avoid all issues by laying blame wherever it could. I would have loved to have been there after they had to eat the whole "lack of maintenance" comment; what a bunch of losers. I'd find a new dealership if at all possible.

Turn off the EGR. It's a simple fix. For the record: I don't like dodges either. My 24V CTD was a complete JUNK PILE, motor/body/drivetrain. never again will I waste my money on a Dodge.