2016 Dodge Ram 1500 Wiring Diagram Free

[Loren Swaggr]

LinkedInand 3rd parties use essential and non-essential cookies to provide, secure, analyze and improve our Services, and to show you relevant ads (including professional and job ads) on and off LinkedIn. Learn more in our Cookie Policy.

One of the hardest if not impossible hurdles for a Technician to overcomer is incorrect or missing service information. When service information is wrong or missing all together, it makes diagnosing a vehicle the first time almost impossible. A massive amount of time can be consumed trying to find the information needed, add to this a flat rate pay system and low warranty times and you can create the perfect storm for a mis-diagnosis. I've also personally seen this lead to new car buy backs and lemon law cases. For all the start up companies automotive companies, this article is for you. Learn from the mistakes of others, take your time and be diligent when producing service information for your technicians.

During a project I worked on for an OEM I had the opportunity to see how the engineering diagrams for the wiring harness routing could be useful in finding problems. Unfortunately most of the time, those diagrams never make it to the dealer/aftermarket service information portal. My job with this OEM was to diagnose electrical defects that would cause failures as the vehicle went through the assembly line. We would document damage found and repair the wiring harness or connector during re work. As a re work technician we would notice areas in the vehicle where there was a high probably of wires being pinched or cut. This information could prove to be extremely useful in a dealership setting, considering many times the wires were pinched behind the dash or under the carpet. One instance in particular I noticed a harness had been incorrectly routed and pinched a Can Communication line, after checking several vehicles still going down the line, they were all the same. This was an area behind the dash that the harness could rub through over time but not necessarily fail while the vehicle was still in the plant. This information if passed on to the dealership technicians could save time and effort when it came to diagnosing intermittent problems under warranty. I know some manufacturers use this information for service bulletins while others choose to do nothing with it like in my experience. This is just one example of missing information that could be helpful.

I decided to write this article because this week I encountered a vehicle where incorrect service information caused a lot of wasted time and I realized, this is something that is rarely discussed. The vehicle was a 2012 Dodge Ram 1500 with a no communication complaint after the dash was removed. This should have been a straight forward diagnosis but as soon as I opened Tech Authority (Chrysler OEM Service Info), I noticed that the C Can communication diagram did not match the truck I was working on even though the information was obtained by the vehicles Vin. After looking at the diagram for the Data Link Connector I noticed that it was correct, but when looking at the C Can diagram it was incorrect. You can see the discrepancy in the picture at the top of this article. Anytime I look at a communication network failure problem, the most efficient path to success is to divide the network either by using a splice pack to do so or a connector that may split the circuits. Once that's done you can determine which circuit your fault is on or which half of the network. Unfortunately with this vehicle, the diagnostic junction connector shown on the diagram did not exist. The dash was removed from the vehicle so I had access to the entire harness and was able to locate every other plug except the one needed to easily split the network in half. This wasted time and made the vehicle harder to diagnose. Knowing this is a 2012, that means the service information has likely been incorrect for the last decade. After using an oscilloscope and looking at C Can neg and C Can pos I knew that C Can neg was intermittently shorted to power. We did end up finding the problem, the plug that would have gone to the trailer brake control module had it been equipped was pinched and that shorted the C Can to an ignition positive wire.

I want to look at the problem above from a standpoint of a flat rate technician working in a warranty scenario. In my early career I worked at several different dealerships all with different brands. Getting paid warranty diagnostic time was always a struggle, sometimes it came down to the technician not documenting properly and sometimes it came down to the service advisor/manager not fully understanding the problem at hand. To be completely fair though, most dealerships at the time were still utilizing hand written inspection reports, although I see dealerships doing this still today for some reason. FYI, the rest of us are using digital inspections and taking pictures to document everything. Now back to our problem vehicle above, if this vehicle were looked at for a communication problem under warranty, the incorrect diagrams would have made it extremely time consuming to diagnose. This could lead to the technician giving up on the vehicle which could start the viscous cycle of what I like to call "Musical Bays". This is when a vehicle gets bounced around between technicians until no one wants to look at it anymore. Usually by that time, so many hands have been in it and so many parts have been swapped that the vehicle has more problems than it came in with. At that point a field engineer may be called in to try to rectify the situation and get the customer back in their vehicle. But now they have to sift through the issues caused by everyone working on it and the original complaint. My experience in this scenario is, the car rarely gets fixed and it almost always ends up as a buy back. Something as simple as a wiring diagram being incorrect can be the cause of all of this heart ache.

Wiring diagrams are not the only information I've seen be incorrect or missing. One of my good friends and fellow mobile diagnostic technicians experienced a problem where service information was not in the location it should have been. The vehicle was a Chevrolet Tahoe, it was a post collision repair. The vehicle had a complaint of the rear glass not opening when the button was pressed. This gentlemen went through all the regular testing and found no output to the latch from the BCM, the circuit was checked for continuity and the ability to carry a load and no problems were found. The BCM was replaced and programmed and much to his surprise the problem remained. Upon a second diagnosis, he noticed that the rear wiper arm would continuously move ever so slightly like it was trying to move to the park position. At that point he asked the body shop if the wiper arm had been removed, it had! They removed the wiper arm, turned the wiper on and off and the motor went to the park position and then the glass was able to open with the switch. Once he realized that the wiper motor not being in the park position would cause the glass to not open he then checked the scan data in the BCM to see if there was a PID for the wiper position, there is not in GDS2 or any aftermarket tool. After this he was kind enough to tell everyone about his misfortune with this vehicle so it wouldn't happen again. I then decided to spend 3 hours looking through service information, looking at the system overview, general functions and anything I could find about the BCM and rear Hatch functions to see if the information about the wiper could be found. Eventually in a trouble tree for a BCM code I found a note written in the same black color, font and size that stated "If the wiper is not in the park position the rear glass will not open." This would have been great information for my friend to have, but the vehicle had no codes and the trouble tree I was looking at had nothing to do with the rear hatch. Without a PID for the rear wiper park position it's not easily noticed that it is not in its correct position. Without the overview of the system including this, it's virtually impossible to know. Even had someone happened upon the trouble tree that I found, because the information was not bold faced or in red, I don't believe it would ever be seen. For this case I did send in a request for the service information to be edited so the information could be found easier. Again had this vehicle been looked at under warranty, the likely hood of it being diagnosed in a timely manner isn't very high.

There's one last scenario I want to throw at there where incorrect information could cause problems. All manufacturers have a help line for their technicians to use. I do the same for my customers. If a wiring diagram is different than the actual vehicle, it's almost impossible for the hotline specialist to help the technician on the other end. If wire colors or connector cavity numbers are wrong, the technician may get the wrong reading and then relay bad information to the help line. If scan data PIDS are missing or incorrect and a technician is asked by the hotline to relay data back to them, then it can send both parties on a wild goose chase. One scan data PID that can often be wrong that comes to mind is engine coolant temperature (ECT). On the majority of vehicles an ECT sensor reading of -40f means an open circuit. This is an easy test to perform, unplug the sensor, if the reading goes to -40f then the circuits are likely good and the sensor is the problem. Many times in enhanced data, this PID can be given a false value meaning when it's unplugged it may go to say 50f but service information will state the vehicle must show -40f when the sensor is unplugged. If the technician uses OBD data which is not allowed to use fake values, the ECT will show -40f. Unfortunately many factory scan tools don't have the ability to look at OBD information nor will service information direct the technician there. Because of scenarios like this, it is crucial that service information be written correctly. If information is incorrect, the likelihood of a vehicle being repaired correctly the first time under warranty is almost non existent.

3a8082e126