BUY WITH CARE

The defining Dodge/Ram Hemi 5.7 failure is MDS lifter and camshaft wear -- the internal "Hemi tick": the multi-displacement-system (cylinder-deactivation) lifters on the deactivating cylinders wear and collapse and score the camshaft lobes. Owners report a top-end ticking, a cylinder misfire (P0300/P030x codes), rough running or shaking, metal in the oil, and in the worst cases stalling or a seized engine. 292 federal ENGINE complaints across the 2009-2019 Ram 1500, Durango, Grand Cherokee, Charger and 300 name lifters, camshaft, MDS or cylinder deactivation; among the mileage-known reports the failures cluster around 100,000 miles (median). These models are engine-mixed, so this describes the 5.7 Hemi specifically, not the 3.6 V6.

Check — Cold-start and listen for a persistent top-end tick that does NOT fade once warm (this is the catastrophic one -- distinct from the exhaust-manifold-bolt tick in HEMI-2); scan for stored or pending cylinder-misfire codes, and ask whether the camshaft or lifters were ever replaced and whether there is metal in the oil. A proper repair is a camshaft plus a full lifter set (sometimes a short block), so budget for a major engine repair on a high-mileage 5.7.