2002 DODGE RAM 3500 — Complaint #1874285
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about FUEL SYSTEM, DIESEL:STORAGE:TANK ASSEMBLY filed February 17, 2023
NHTSA complaint #1874285 (ODI reference 11507882) concerns a 2002 DODGE RAM 3500 and was filed on February 17, 2023. The owner reports the failure occurred on February 5, 2023. The report was geocoded to Tennessee based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as fuel system, diesel:storage:tank assembly, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same DODGE RAM 3500 cohort independently describe similar fuel system, diesel:storage:tank assembly failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2002 DODGE RAM 3500 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
Installed transfer fuel tank in back of my pickup truck, two weeks ago after putting 45 gals of fuel in tank, next morning tank was empty. Removed tank and found the bottom of tank has many holes from defective aluminum plate which entire tank is made from. Contacted manufacture ( RDS Manufacturing, 300 Industrial Park Drive, Perry, FL ). Was informed that water in contact with bottom probably caused the problem, my thought is when the sheet of aluminum was made there was contamination in the process therefor causing porosity in the sheeting. There are thousands of these tanks out there on the road and this can't be the only one with this problem, fuel leak of this magnitude is very dangerous on our highways.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1874285 |
| ODI Number | 11507882 |
| Date Filed | February 17, 2023 |
| Failure Date | February 5, 2023 |
| VIN | 3B7MF33C12M |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.