Now I'm really jealous. Mine is 4.10 and that's easily the most annoying thing about the truck. It was ordered that way so it could PULL stuff but it screams on the highway at 75. It's a lot nicer and quieter ride at 65.
You also get forced to tow in 6th, which generally isn't recommended with the NV5600 until you've had one fail and rebuilt it with properly drilled oil galleys for 6th gear.
In my 2004 I had 3.73s, which were the tallest gears available at the time. That made for 2,000 RPM = 68 MPH. That worked fine, too, but I like it being a bit taller. If the truck had 3.73s in it (which are still an option) I would've been fine, but 4.10s just are too tall for anything I do. Really, with how much torque the Cummins has (even in your year), I just don't see a need for 4.10s unless you're going to be consistently towing things at gross through the mountains. And even with your giant trailer, it obviously isn't required.
This truck is pretty quiet anyway (I'd argue too quiet - but I know the engine will get louder with time), but especially turning so slow on the highway, it makes for a very nice, quiet ride. Not too quiet like a Cadillac, but it's good for racking up the miles. Saturday morning I was awake at 4:30 AM (CDT) to go catch my flight, left the dealer at 12:45 PM (EDT, so 11:45 CDT), and drove over 700 miles before calling it a night. I could've gone further, but decided a bit east of St. Louis (around Scott AFB) seemed like a good place to stay.
One thing I'll say, though, is that I put 108,000 miles on my NV5600, mostly towing, and always in 6th gear. That transmission is still going strong. So I'm not sure who's had problems with it or if it was just the early ones, but for me, it was just fine. At >180k now it's still doing fine, according to my friend who bought it from me.
On your exhaust braking buttons, I've heard similar complaints about that system. I don't know if you can even wire up a remote switch, but I love my "trucker style" pull knob mounted right on the shifter.
Did Dodge at least do the thing where the truck will free wheel downhill in "on" until the first brake application? I thought that's what the "on" setting was for compared to "auto" which as you mentions, is a speed hold without triggering it.
I don't think the system has any way that you could easily put a button elsewhere. It all goes through the computer, so I may just have to live with it as-is. I've read up enough complaints on it that hopefully someone smarter than me can figure a work-around.
On the "full" setting, it just turns on as soon as you let off the throttle (well, I suppose 1/2 second or so delay). I haven't played much with the "auto" setting... I'll do that and see what I think of it.
I assume you have a factory trailer brake system? That's a minor complaint on my old model, since those didn't exist back then, you buy a nice progressive one with accelerometers in it, but downshifts and compression braking confuse the accelerometer a bit, and can lead to the controller thinking you're braking a little harder at the downshift, so it bumps the trailer brakes up a bit, especially if you're at all "jerky" during the downshift. Can create a little braking oscillation that makes it hard to be smooth after that starts...
Be interesting to see if the factory brake controllers are smarter about that with a manual transmission or if they're tuned for the automatics like the aftermarket progressives are.
It does have the factory trailer brake system. This is the first truck I've owned that has a built-in system. Before that I had a Tekonsha Prodigy, which was (at the time) supposedly the best you could buy. Of course I bought it in 2003. It had a wire that got spliced into the brake light switch so it knew when you were hitting the brakes, and I never found it to have any odd behaviors as a result. When I bought my first truck in 2003 and was reading up on what brake controller to buy, everyone said the crappy brake controllers were a "get what you pay for" deal. So I bought the Prodigy, which everyone said was the one to get, and was very happy with it.
It'll be interesting to see how the built-in trailer braking does. I actually don't have a trailer with trailer brakes on it, so it may be a while before I find out. Maybe I'll offer to tow my houseback riding instructor's horse trailer somewhere to try it out, it has trailer brakes. In fact I helped her fix the wiring on it yesterday.
This is a factory vehicle, not a custom job.
