Pull the NHTSA engine-category complaint record for the 2013–2017 Ram 1500 and one thing jumps out before you even read a single narrative: 927 complaints across five straight model years, and every one of those five years clears at least 50 documented mileage reports — a real sample, not a handful of outliers. Read the complaint text behind the numbers and it gets more specific than "engine problem." Owners describe a tick at idle that gets louder, a check-engine light for a cylinder misfire, and a shop bill for a part almost nobody outside a repair bay had heard of before: a valve-train lifter.
The 5.7-liter Hemi V8 was the volume engine in the Ram 1500 through this stretch — standard on most trims above the base, with a 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 as the entry option and, from 2014 on, a 3.0-liter EcoDiesel V6 as a third choice. Ask an independent diesel-and-gas truck shop what they see the Hemi come in for on these model years and the answer is consistent: a roller lifter that stops rotating on the camshaft lobe, wearing a flat spot into both parts and shedding metal into the oil that the rest of the engine then circulates.
What a lifter failure actually is
The 5.7 Hemi uses a roller lifter riding on each camshaft lobe — a small cylindrical follower that's supposed to spin freely as the cam turns underneath it, so the roller, not a sliding face, takes the wear. When a lifter stops rotating, one spot on the roller and one spot on the lobe grind against each other instead of rolling. The lobe wears down, the lifter can gall or seize outright, and both start throwing metal shavings into the oil. From there the damage spreads: the oil pump and every bearing downstream sees that grit, valve timing on the affected cylinder goes soft, and the truck starts misfiring, ticking, or losing power under load.
It's not a subtle failure once it starts. Owners describe a tick that's audible at idle with the hood up, gets louder over days or weeks, and eventually throws a misfire code as the affected cylinder falls out of proper valve timing. By the time a shop pulls the valve covers, it's common to find a camshaft lobe worn down to a rounded nub and metal contamination that means more than a lifter swap — often a full engine teardown or replacement.
The mileage window
Across the five charted model-years, median failure mileage runs from a low of ~58,000 miles on the 2017 to a high of ~88,000 miles on the 2015, with 2013, 2014, and 2016 landing in between at 82,000–83,000. That's a truck that's typically well outside its 5-year/60,000-mile Chrysler powertrain warranty by the time the tick starts, on a segment where trucks routinely get driven hard, towed with, and kept past 100,000 miles by design. A half-ton pickup at 75,000–90,000 miles is exactly the age and mileage where this pattern shows up most in the federal complaint record.
NHTSA also logged real safety allegations inside these same engine-complaint clusters — 64 fire allegations, 4 crash reports, and 21 injury reports across the five years, the 2015 and 2016 carrying the bulk of the fire allegations. We're not asserting the lifter failure itself caused those specific incidents; NHTSA groups all engine-category complaints together regardless of exact cause, and we haven't read each underlying narrative. What the aggregate shows is that this isn't purely a nuisance-noise complaint pile — some meaningful share of it involves owners describing a more serious event.
Owners noticed enough to sue
The pattern was consistent enough, across enough trucks, that owners organized a nationwide class-action lawsuit against Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler) alleging a defective valve-train design across the Gen III 5.7L and 6.4L Hemi engines — Petro, et al. v. FCA US LLC, filed in 2022. As of a 2024 ruling the case continued on narrower grounds after some nationwide class claims were dismissed; individual and state-level claims have kept moving through the courts since. We are not asserting the lawsuit's outcome here, only that its existence and its core allegation — a lifter and camshaft defect producing metal contamination and eventual engine failure — line up with what independent shops and the NHTSA complaint text describe.
We did not verify a recall claim for this failure against NHTSA's live recalls API for this piece, so we're deliberately not asserting one exists or doesn't. Chrysler/Ram has addressed some lifter failures under warranty and through service bulletins on a case-by-case basis; that's a warranty and litigation story, not a confirmed safety-recall one, and we'd rather leave the recall question open than get it wrong.
What to do if you own one, or are about to
Listen for a tick at idle, especially cold. A light tick that fades as the engine warms can be normal hydraulic-lifter noise on any V8. A tick that persists, gets louder over weeks, or is joined by a misfire code is the lifter-failure pattern, not routine noise.
Don't ignore a random-cylinder misfire on a Hemi. On these trucks a misfire code without an obvious ignition cause (bad coil, fouled plug) is worth a valve-cover-off inspection before you replace parts that aren't the problem.
If you're shopping one, ask for an oil analysis or a cold start listen. A used 5.7 Hemi Ram 1500 in the 60,000–100,000-mile band is sitting right in this failure's documented window. A cold start with the hood open, and a spectrographic oil analysis if the seller will allow it, are both cheap ways to catch metal contamination before you buy the truck.
How we did it
Source. NHTSA engine-category owner-complaint counts and median failure mileage for the Ram 1500, model years 2013–2017, from our copy of the public NHTSA complaint database (re-validated against the current snapshot on August 13, 2026). All five charted model-years clear a minimum mileage-sample threshold of n ≥ 50 (actual range: n=57 to n=166). A wider 2009–2018 pull across the Ram 1500, 2500, and 3500 totals 1,397 engine complaints; the lower-sample years and the heavier-duty 2500/3500 trucks in that wider set are mentioned for context but not charted or quoted for mileage.
Caveat. NHTSA files complaints by model, not by engine, and the 2013–2017 Ram 1500 also offered a 3.6L Pentastar V6 (standard on base trims) and, from 2014 on, a 3.0L EcoDiesel V6 — so these are model-level engine complaints, not an engine-isolated tally. The 5.7L Hemi was the highest-volume engine on these trucks and the lifter/camshaft pattern is the dominant documented engine complaint in the underlying narratives we reviewed, but the raw counts include some complaints from the V6 and diesel engines too. Complaint counts also reflect how often owners file, not a measured failure rate, and are unverified consumer reports. We did not make any recall claim, in either direction, in this piece — that requires live verification against NHTSA's recalls API, which we didn't run for this cycle, and we'd rather publish without the claim than risk publishing a wrong one. The class-action lawsuit reference describes public litigation, not an NHTSA finding.