If you’ve purchased a 2026 Ram Heavy Duty truck and have noticed that something is off about your instrument cluster, but just can’t put your finger on it, I have some weird news for you. Ram has just announced a recall, and it’s actually pretty funny. Ram has figured out that it accidentally installed the international-style clusters Canadians get in U.S.-spec Ram HDs, and installed U.S. clusters in Canadian trucks. Amusingly, this is arguably an upgrade for Canadian trucks and a downgrade for trucks in the United States. Let’s get into it.
As you know, your vehicle’s instrument cluster is a vital information center. If your truck is overheating, you will likely see it happening on your instrument cluster before you notice it anywhere else. Likewise, if the engine in your crapbox just lost oil pressure, that little red genie lamp of death will glow, at least for the few fleeting moments of life that your engine has left.
On August 19, Ram published “New Safety Recall Advanced Communication – 79C.” In it, Ram explains that it accidentally installed Canadian market instrument clusters in 2026 Ram 2500HD, 3500HD, 4500HD, and 5500HD trucks. A few days later, Transport Canada published “2025424 – FIAT CHRYSLER AUTOMOBILES.” This recall directly mirrors the one in the United States, but with the opposite problem, as our Canadian friends have apparently gotten superior U.S.-spec instrument clusters.
Give Me A Brake
Something great about instrument clusters is that they’re built to standards. That way, regardless if you slide into a Chevrolet Equinox or a Volkswagen Jetta, you should be able to understand what the symbols on the dashboard mean. Canada follows ISO 7000 standards for instrument clusters.
What’s nice about ISO 7000 symbols is that you can understand them regardless of what language you speak. Ideally, you would know that an exclamation point inside of a circle with two part-circles on it means that there’s something wrong with your vehicle’s braking system. Here is a handful of the symbols:
America does things its own way, slightly. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard § 571.101 Standard No.101 Controls and Displays is what dictates what you see on your instrument cluster and more. From the Standard:
Scope. This standard specifies performance requirements for location, identification, color, and illumination of motor vehicle controls, telltales and indicators.
Purpose. The purpose of this standard is to ensure the accessibility, visibility and recognition of motor vehicle controls, telltales and indicators, and to facilitate the proper selection of controls under daylight and nighttime conditions, in order to reduce the safety hazards caused by the diversion of the driver’s attention from the driving task, and by mistakes in selecting controls.
The Standard is ridiculously long, but what matters to us is this chart, which shows what symbols or words an automaker must use:
You’ll notice that, for brake system malfunction, you don’t get the symbol of a brake as you’d get in the ISO standard. Instead, America wants you to spell out a big fat “BRAKE.” Oh yes, it has to be big and fat, too. If the font is too small, as was the case in some 2.2 million Teslas until last year, you’ll make the feds upset.
Of course, accidentally installing ISO standard instrument clusters into U.S. market cars is also frowned upon, and that’s the pickle that Ram has found itself in.
According to Stellantis, approximately 2,885 Ram HD trucks, which were built between April 3 and July 31, are affected by the recall. Approximately 2,453 of these trucks are 2026 Ram 2500HDs. The automaker says it launched an investigation on August 7th and discovered that this batch of trucks has one specific, tiny problem. The only real difference that drivers will notice is that the brake warning lamp will have a picture of a brake rather than spelling out “BRAKE.”
Stellantis also identified an additional 124 trucks that were sold in Canada that have brake warning lamps that spell out “BRAKE” rather than giving the ISO symbol. Yep, that’s it. As funny as this sounds, Transport Canada, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and Stellantis are all taking this seriously, and that’s good! Stellantis says:
Vehicles built with IPCs that display the incorrect brake system warning light may cause a customer to not understand that a brake system problem potentially exists, which may cause a vehicle crash without prior warning.
Marelli North America of Southfield, Michigan, supplied these clusters, and the part numbers in the recall include 68740411AB, 68740411AC, 68740412AB, and 68740412AC.
A part of me is laughing a little, because you could argue that 124 lucky Canadians got a tiny upgrade: a big, scary red light with “BRAKE” in all caps rather than the symbol. In exchange, the States got 2,885 Rams with the somewhat more vague ISO symbol.
Safety First
But I’ll stop being silly here. Obviously, if you’ve been taught to look for the ISO symbol and now see BRAKE, you might get confused. Likewise, imagine a driver in the U.S. seeing the brake symbol and getting confused. As it is, I’ve been asked about the “exclamation point in a beaker” light, which you and I know to be the TPMS symbol, but that person did not. So, logically, even small and seemingly silly errors need to be taken seriously.
Stellantis says to check your mail after September 25, 2025, as that’s when the recall notices will be sent out. You will get a new cluster free of charge. If you have questions, call Chrysler customer service at 800-853-1403 or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 (TTY: 1-888-275-9171).
Otherwise, you have nothing to worry about. There’s nothing actually wrong with your truck, and if you did not know what the symbol was before, now you do! Your truck is just a tad more Canadian or American than you probably expected, and that’s okay!
Topshot: Mercedes Streeter
Americans think a symbol is worse because they are too dumb to remember anything. They brag about all the stuff they do not read, like a brake system failure warnignon dash.
My manager was so happy carwash employee showed him how to use side view mirrors when towing like it was some life hack. He was towing with this Ram for like a decade already and didn’t know how to use his mirrors for towing
Gotta admit, I have to look up most of the symbols my Prius displays, except for the warning triangle of death. Fortunately, this occurs so infrequently I have the PDF manuals on my phone.
The yellow “you are having too much fun, how dare you stomp on the brakes and turn at the same time” triangle?
“get a new cluster free of charge”
I would be very, very careful to volunteer someone replace parts in the IP for such a stupid recall in my new $60k truck. If they have to pull the IP to get at it, it’s never getting replaced unless not fixing it will actively kill me. I can just imagine the extra set of fasteners you get for free from the dealer when they pull this.
“ As it is, I’ve been asked about the “exclamation point in a beaker” light, which you and I know to be the TPMS symbol, but that person did not.”
It’s always irked me that in all cars except some Hondas, the light for “low tire pressure” and “TPMS system malfunction; service required” are the same except for flashing the first few seconds the car is started. (Those Hondas have a separate “TPMS” light for system malfunction.) Driving one of the 99% of cars that don’t have a separate light, I still have to reassure passengers that that damn orange light is on because of a half-dead sensor that sends codes intermittently enough that no shop can really figure out where it’s coming from, not actually because a tire is low.
What a ClusterTruck!
Now if cars could display error codes on the nice dash screen that would be great.
OEMs don’t even want you checking your own oil let alone trying to diagnose warning lights.
Exactly, they are taking away dipsticks. I can’t ever see buying a vehicle that doesn’t have a dipstick.
That reminds me, I need to see if Toyota NA would be so kind as to donate a few copies of TechStream to the Plano library system. We’re neighbors, after all.
Because then you can prove to them they were the ones not putting enough oil in.
Source: Cadillac dealer asked me drive back to them to finsih an oil chnage by adding oil when I complained that no oil shows up on the dipstick after they changed oil
Hold on/attendez – won’t the Canadian spec instruments also show km/h in the big numbers on the speedo, and the US spec miles? That would be a bigger issue.
That’s all digital. Most if not all cars can switch by user option.
(The brake symbol is probably digital too, but there’s no option for it)
FCA-era and newer Mopar and their brethren with digital clusters allow the user to switch between US and metric almost too easily. It can be as simple as holding and/or pressing a button in one of the directional button pads on the steering wheel
What a cluster f… fail. Yeah that’s what I meant.
I want to say “leave it to Stellantis” but the reality is manufacturing can be such a convoluted process, such things can happen.
Any regs against having both “BRAKE” and the ISO symbol? That way one component could handle all markets. Maybe it would require a jumper or system setting so only one of the two would illuminate, but I’d advocate for both turning on at the same time. That way foreigners renting/driving a car in another country would get the symbol they are used to. That would be a user interface win all around.
With the trend toward screens taking over instrument clusters, it’s rapidly becoming a moot point as it would be entirely handled in software. And once you have a screen, you can display explanatory text in addition to the required telltale.
Can you put all of these indicators on a screen? I’d have thought there would be regs requiring some of the critical indicators to be independent of any sort of screen failure.
My experience with the more modern dashboard layouts limited to my now five year old RAV4, which has a split analog and digital layout. The non-critical stuff (door ajar, rear seatbelt status, etc) is on the screen, but I’m fairly sure the critical stuff (check engine, low fuel warning, airbag status, etc) is dedicated lights in the analog area.
Not that there can’t be failures with the analog indicators (I once had a low fuel warning light go bad on my then 15 year old CR-V – and I’ll never hear the end of it from my family for trusting the lack of warning light instead of the needle position on the gauge…), but going full digital for everything seems a bit dangerous, as a single point of failure would take out everything.
I guess I’ll be in for a visual treat the next time I go car shopping.
My 2019 Tiguan was 100% screen – no analog idiot lights
Wow. That really surprises me.
I’ve learned something today. Not entirely sure I’m happy about it, but such is life, I suppose.
Thanks for the info.
That would be too easy…
“124 trucks that were sold in Canada that have brake warning lamps that spell out “BRAKE” rather than giving the ISO symbol.”
Future Marketplace sales ad: Rare one of a kind! No low ball I know whats I got!
Ran when parked.
If Stellantis can’t even figure out which cluster goes in which truck, it really gives me some serious pause for consideration in regards to what other errors are commonly made when assembling them.
It may be an urban legend, but ‘apparently’ Land Rover managed to make a 1st Gen Discovery with 2 doors (5door) on one side, and one door (3door) on the other when making the bodyshell… then it was used for site security or something like that
Chevrolet did that for years on the Suburban. I thought it was a great idea.
This seems like a preconceived complaint you wouldn’t see on a Toyota recall. They screwed up something small on a few hundred trucks and are reflashing to fix it, something many manufacturers do (or far worse, see Ford)
What I really like about the ISO brake symbol is how it visually depicts a stylized version of outdated tech – a drum brake. Just like how the check engine symbol is often a ’60s V8 with circular air cleaner on top.
Or the save symbol is still a 3 1/2 inch floppy disk
Not only a circular air cleaner on top, but also a belt-driven fan on its nose and a flywheel on its tail. You could argue that might be any engine with a single down-draft carb, as inline engines and V6’s also had their air cleaners above the engine when viewed from the side.
Drum brakes are still around, but yeah, most people will not recognize that that’s what the symbol is. Still, I’m not sure a “disc brake” symbol would be any better.
The biggest reason the Canadian trucks are better is that they are in Canada.
I don’t wanna read for warnings, I want a symbol that I can quickly identify.
But I’m also Canadian and used to the ISO 7000 standard, so it may just be bias.
Symbols give you less information.
I’m ok reading.
If you’re aware of your basic universal symbols, I fail to see how “Brakes” gives you more information than a symbol for Brakes. They both accomplish the same thing, but one is processed faster.
What about “O2 sensor failure” or “Cylinder 1 misfire” vs a check engine light?
You cannot fix or test either of those from the driver’s seat. So the check engine light is sufficient.
But if you know something about cars, the light doesn’t provide sufficient information on if continued driving is a risk or not.
Misfire will cause the MIL to flash. Steady MIL means it needs to be investigated. Flashing indicates engine or emissions damage may occur if you continue driving.
How many times do you think people Google, “What does flashing Check Engine Light mean”
The Venn Diagram of people googling that and the ones googling “O2 sensor failure” or “Cylinder 1 misfire” is a circle.
It’s a message. It can say anything. Not just what my example is…
Tell you what, why don’t you just respond in ISO 7000 symbols.
You’re not supposed to be reading messages when you’re driving. You’re supposed to get an indication of something gone awry, and the urgency level to addressing it.
I don’t need to read “left rear ABS sensor out of range”. I need an ABS symbol that lets me know my ABS is now non-functional.
I’m sure at least some percentage of people won’t recognize the symbol. A larger percentage of people would know what “Brakes” means. Perhaps they will find out soon enough either way.
If only there was some kind of owner-oriented documentation that was supplied with every vehicle.
You know people never RTFM. That’s what keeps me employed.
I challenge you to make a symbol for brakes that makes any sort of sense. The computer industry tried with file storage and mucked it up monumentally.
Having to explain that the hockey puck and the lobster trap are the same thing.
This is the one we Canadians know. It doesn’t have to make traditional sense, it just needs to be consistent over the decades.
Think of how the current generation only knows the diskette symbol as the “save” button. It ecplises original symbolism and transcends to universal understanding.
https://share.google/images/x8KqECsG2CeWUVnbj
I find it remarkable that the same symbol serves for machine washable and low brake fluid, and a dead turtle or a hand genade have something to do with taillights.
And λ ???
Gay rights? Radioactive decay? Something happened that is statistically unlikely? (Don’t all the warnings mean that?) something about eigenvectors? ( sorry I’m late. the eigenvector light came on so I decided to play it safe and take the bus) Your car has cleared enough small objects that it can now be considered a planet, or you are a terrible driver. That last one makes the mots sense unless yeur car has the improbability drive option
You are the 1st American I met that admitted that. The rest of them are proud and brag about how much they do not read
Your instrument cluster would have to be huge to accommodate all the French words.
That’s a lot of symbols. 60% should probably just be a symbol that means “bring this to the mechanic asap”.
I think getting specific can be helpful. Too many people see a check-engine light and say “oh, must be a loose gas cap – that happened in my old Sentra in high school” and then just keep driving until they get around to it.
To be fair, ISO 7000 has a symbol for checking the fuel cap.
Lazy GM added it to their warning messages to save money on warranty repairs to tighten their leaky gas caps. My GM gas cap was recalled for not sealing. I meant it was recalled for tripping CEL light GM had to pay to check and fix
ICE raided a Stellantis plant and detained around 400 Canadian gauge clusters because it wasn’t sure if they were in American trucks legally
Well done.
I laughed a little and then sighed heavily.
Buy this man a coffee.
Does that meet the definition of a cluster fuck? Yes, yes I believe it does.
I once had a problem with the climate control on my wife’s US-purchased XC70 while we were living in Toronto for a year. Didn’t realize till we got it home that they replaced the HVAC controls with celsius instead of fahrenheit (back in the day when things were printed vs on screen). Kept it and loved it that way for years after.
They probably couldn’t order the US part anyways. It wouldn’t be in the dealer ordering system.
Well it is illegal to use brake in Canada unless it shows Frein as well
Kijiji and FB marketplace ads show this to be false, I’ve NEVER seen a french ad where they don’t Frenglish it up by saying “brakes”, or even worse, “breaks”.
Well, according to the French people I know, Canadians don’t/can’t speak French.
(One friend found it so bad, she pretended to be Spanish, so that people wouldn’t try to speak Canadian French to her; “It was so bad, I couldn’t understand anything they said”).
Yeah, being an anglophone, I was taught Parisian french in school. Which doesn’t help me much in Quebec.
Montreal French is close to Parisian, but the countryside is more quebecois and the maritimes are Acadian – which is sorta French (maybe?). An Acadian relative recently did a tourist trip to France and the family was surprised she could understand the locals.
In high school they taught Castilian Spanish, which was counterproductive trying to to speak to my Mexican friends, so I switched to taking Latin. And it was taught by a teacher with a Japanese accent. The only conversational thing I remember is Vasa in tecto ranis plena sunt , the jars on the roof are full of frogs. So if I run into any ancient Romans I am prepared for very limited small talk.
Quebecois is based on the French spoken in Paris in the 17th and 18th centuries. When the British took control of Quebec, they were cut off from France and the language of both groups evolved in different ways.
Mostly though it’s because the French are bloody snobbish about their language. I have no problem understanding Quebecois, despite learning modern French.
hon hon hon, les breques are, ‘ow you say, fuqued
I thought that was French for station wagons.
I’m surprised theyre not required to translate marque and model names, put “Bélier” in various places on the outside of the truck in letters 3x larger than the RAM emblems
I always thought (i) means you have a new text message, check phone immediately. Huh, learn something new here everyday, I guess.
Two, yes two, of my fancy cars have worked flawlessly for weeks, been driven and photographed, amused their drivers and been good. They share some components (which is odd) but the warning lights? The two cars? an early Aston Lagonda, and a Citroen SM. It is the first time for years that both have together functioned for six months. The Citroen has a big bright red light with “STOP” engraved into the plastic. The Aston just lights up like a period discotheque and then either carries on regardless or fails to proceed, Some of the symbols are ISO, some are not.
If the Aston starts showing warning lights that make sense, then you know you’re in real trouble.
Very impressive!
Talk about a glutton for punishment.
Mechanicinally ans stylisically they are fine, sshud the electrickery thas drivves one to drink.
Oh, the Citroen has a habit of rusting in places that did not exist before they rusted away, leaving vital other bits without support, which is annoying.
Oh, I would love to own either of those cars, but I would be hard pressed to determine which is the reliable backup car and which is the fun car.
Also SM and punishment.
As long as they’re going to do the minimum possible to both convey and obscure an issue, I’d rather have the ISO standard. What I wish they were doing was saying something more like Brake pads worn, brake fluid low, LF wheel speed sensor fault, etc.
But then you wouldn’t need to spend $200 at the dealer for them to run a diagnostic check.
Another more serious thought: the symbols made sense in an analog age when the best we could do was have a fault trigger a light. In today’s world of screens screens screens, there’s no reason you can’t have detailed messages. Even if car companies don’t want to program 100 different languages, they could do it for 4 and most people in the world could make sense of one of them (or use their phone to translate).
Another option (and maybe it exists?) have Android and iOS automatically “translate” ISO symbols via the camera app.
Valid point, Google Lens can translate kanji, don’t see why it couldn’t be coded to work with other symbol sets.
Or maybe go the other way: car display throws up a QR code and your phone translates it.
More expensive cars have long had small displays that will provide such details. With the proliferation of screens, this is becoming much more common.
BRAKE isn’t better if you don’t speak English. If it is, why aren’t all the symbols just words instead?
ISO is all about forcing drivers to learn a small symbolic language instead of requiring localization for each language. It’s especially good for those who rent cars in different markets and those who want to ship them across borders.
I don’t think requiring knowledge of a small specialized symbolic language is a bad thing. That’s what road signs are, after all. I don’t know why Americans are always so happy with their various ignorances.
As I noted, it’s mostly joking! It’s really neat that there are symbols that anyone can understand regardless of their spoken language.
Now, actually heeding the warnings is another thing. I drove my VW Touareg about 20k miles with the brake wear light on because I didn’t care enough to replace the wear sensors…
I guess nobody else learned to code in APL All symbols, no words unless you assign a word to a variable. Some people call it a write only language.
I took an APL course in 1975. Someone kept stealing the special type ball. It was the only language the computer system at that school used, and I had been using a pdp 11 the year before for Fortran . Some professor was using it for a research project and was required to offer classes in APL
I didn’t touch a computer for ten years after that. Then I found C. I liked C. I very much did not like C++ , I loved 68000 assembly.
APL made me decide to be an art major.
I agree with the overall idea but take issue with you saying “small” amount. I guess there’s a limited number that you can expect to see often, but eventually you’ll come across an indecipherable hieroglyph. A few months ago my motorcycle showed me an image that to me looked like a bomb exploding with an exclamation mark. Seemed bad. Turns out it was the “headlamp bulb burned out” symbol. Thank you Mercedes for teaching me these are ISO standards so at least I now know how to google it.
Yes, for example the classic DOOR AJAR. I don’t think AJAR is teached on a typical English class.. a
Bonus question: in the age of forward collision warning systems, if your rental suddenly displays BRAKE, what should you do? slam the brakes, just in case?
Right?! Everyone knows it’s a door, not a jar. Sheesh.
Was sort of excusable in 1970.
Not now.
Learning a small symbolic language is fine, until you have to have to learn it across many things, and it becomes large. I know all the symbols for my car. But clothes washing instructions is another vocabulary.
Road signs are usually a direct analog to the real world, and often include text as well. ISO symbols are very simple and can be hard to interpret. Look at any meme joking about what a dash indicator means and you can bet a huge portion of the population has interpreted the indicator that way.
I feel like ISO really phoned it in on the parking and reverse light “symbols.”
An attempt was made.
Rear fog light indicator’s especially vague. It’s a slightly different pattern and faces the other way but is specified to be yellow when it should be red like the actual rear fog light.
That’s not the symbol for “your buttocks are sunburned”? Should I go to the doctor or the mechanic?
I guess they’re usable because they sync with the “PRNDL” standard which has been adopted around the world.
Without the iso nonsense we wouldn’t have all the hilarious translations of what the symbols mean!
Amen. And I joke out of love: it’s such an impossible task trying to figure out what symbol will be universally understood to mean “air filter clog” etc.
We should just allow the ISO cluster symbols, in additional to allowing the US ones.
They should all be navy semaphores.
So all of the symbols that are different would have both? That’s not confusing at all.
My $20 electronic gizmos offer a selection from 1800 languages but my Toyota is incapable of telling me the engine is too hot.
Your Toyota doesn’t have an overheating light or warning message? I highly doubt that. The FMVSS indicator for engine temp is the ISO symbol.
ER03JA25.003_original_size.png (3977×5333)
My Toyota was one of millions made with faulty gauges that act normally at start, rise to center, then lock there even when your car overheats and belches coolant, or burns to the axles.
Toyota cheerfully agreed to fix this, then backed out and offered to let me replace the entire dash at a dealer at my cost.
Then they might consider paying for their known manufacturing defect.
No idiot light appears when overheating.
Check engine is on, but no one can read what the issue is on obd.
I remain unimpressed with Toyota.
I’m open to gauge suggestions that are not manufactured by Toyota.
I’m thinking of an American made all metal radiator and Italian cooling fans.
Oh, so it’s a defect, not anything to do with indicator pictogram differences between FMVSS and ISO.
What specific Toyota is this? My current 100mi commute car is a 08 Avalon.
It’s a 2005 Camry four cylinder.
They were manufactured with this defect in 2005 to 2006, that I’m aware of.
I found service bulletins, but no recall.
Lots of claims for ruined engines.
Issue seems strangely buried online.
My cousin’s later Camry has a tach but no temperature gauge.
Couldn’t believe that.
Aside from an extremely basic temperature gauge, there are no excuses for dashes being so useless now.
My 2016 Prius couldn’t display km/h in the US or mph in Canada. It was one of the first batch they made and no fix was offered.
Neither one?
I would have expected at least a default.
The owners manual would explain which ones that particular vehicle uses
and braille.