68RFE Overview: What Fails, Why It Fails, and What Shops Need to Know First

The 68RFE has been behind the Ram 2500 and 3500 with the 6.7L Cummins since 2007, and it's one of those transmissions that the industry has had a complicated relationship with. It's a capable unit when it's healthy and maintained, but it has known structural weaknesses that make it a high-failure item on working trucks — specifically on trucks that are actually used for what the customer bought them to do. The weak points are well established. The overdrive clutch pack is undersized for the torque input from the Cummins under sustained towing load. The OEM clutch pack has five frictions and four steels, and the apply pressure calibration from the factory leaves very little margin for fluid degradation or elevated temperatures. Once that clutch pack starts slipping — which happens most often during the 4-5 upshift under medium to heavy load — the debris goes through the rest of the transmission and the failure accelerates quickly. What starts as a soft 4-5 shift becomes a no-4th or no-5th condition within a few thousand miles if it's not caught early.

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