AtWhatMileage
Electrical · 1 owner report

Electrical fire or melted wiring on the 1996 Dodge RAM 1500

1 fire 1 of the 1 report for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.

Only 0 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 1
With an odometer reading 0
Reports per 1,000 built 0.7 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 0%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 1
Typical repair $1,500–$9,000
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 47th

When electrical fire or melted wiring gets reported

There are 1 report of electrical fire or melted wiring on the 1996 Dodge RAM 1500. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

It is the 47th most-reported problem on this model year.

None of these reports included an odometer reading, so there is no mileage distribution to show. NHTSA's form does not require the field.

What happens, and what it costs

Of these reports, 1 a fire is mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.

Putting it right typically runs $1,500–$9,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.

The same failure, every year of the Dodge RAM 1500

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

Median
  1. 1996 (this one)
    no odometer readings given
    —
  2. 1997 Dodge RAM 1500 electrical fire or melted wiring
    no odometer readings given
    —
  3. 1999 Dodge RAM 1500 electrical fire or melted wiring 171k
  4. 2002 Dodge RAM 1500 electrical fire or melted wiring 73k
  5. 2003 Dodge RAM 1500 electrical fire or melted wiring 72k
  6. 2005 Dodge RAM 1500 electrical fire or melted wiring 165k

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

Also reported on the 1996 Dodge RAM 1500

Other body or interior problem

53 reports median 132k

Other powertrain problem

31 reports median 110k

ABS module or sensor failure

25 reports median 25k

Other engine problem

20 reports median 121k

Other wheel or tire problem

19 reports median 120k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 1 report is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 1 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed