..........Heater hose strainer..........."modern problems" LOL

As I eluded to in the original post, the heater core is not only TINY in these rigs, but the PASSAGES are proportionately tiny. I would say they are from 1/4---1/6 the size of the "old school" like might be found in our old A bodies and others. "What this means" is that it takes a TINY amount of trash, relatively speaking, to plug them. If you Google this, "I ain't alone" LMAO and neither is Dodge. It's a fairly widespread problem across the brand names