Never ending first times.

[splatterdog]

Right in the middle of a big nasty job. Grand Caravan comes in on a flatbed for a no start. Starter just clicks they said. When it gets dropped, no park now either. Strange. Starter goes thunk pretty good. I'm past halfway to uh-oh now. Put a breaker bar on the crank bolt. Sure enough, tight as can be.

Pretty sure everything is caused by the trans at this point. Anyhow, can't pull just the trans with it locked up. Not enough room for the bell housing to clear the torque converter while still bolted to the engine. So I had to drop the whole works out the bottom. Just doesn't seem right. Sure makes me appreciate the T4's simplicity. I think I removed at least triple the amount of bolts it would take on our cars to remove the engine/trans.

The diff exploded into the torque converter causing the lock up and loss of park. Funny thing, park temporarily worked before it got here.

Here's some good damage for your viewing pleasure

[Petros]

We made the mistake of owning and trying to make a Dogde Caravan reliable. I redeisgned the engine mounts, the steering column (factory one failed at the welds!), the a/c, and the trans. All had failed, and I replaced or rebuilt them.

Trans need major overhaul at only 44k miles, covered under warranty. I paid extra to have the a shift kit installed (faster shifting, less slip on clutches), and oil cooler and a few other modifications. All of the internal hard parts, as well as the soft parts were trashed and needed replacement (I thought that odd with only 44k miles). We managed to double the life of the trans, it failed again a 88k miles since the overhaul. We rebuilt it again, and decided to rebuild the Mitsubishi V6 engine at the same time (the engine was the more reliable thing about the whole car). Again all of the internal parts of the trans had to be replaced again! After another few years the trans was starting to slip a little, so we sold it. We replaced with a Mazda 4wd minimvan MPV, the engine and auto trans in it last 250K+miles, and I replaced them with pull-a-part engine and trans, and we are now closing on 300k miles on it and it is still runs great.

Chrysler had a great idea with the minivan, they were first US maker, and it rides good and is a great size, it is just an unreliable POS. No doubt if it had a Chrysler engine it would have no redeeming value at all.

On our gravel roads the trans was only lasting about 2 years. It is way to lightweight of a trans for the minivan, and it appears Chrysler has not fix it yet. They likely wonder why they went bankrupt.

You will have to tell your customer, either replace the trans, and risk the same problems again, or replace the van with a Honda Oddessy and they will never have another trans issue again for a very long time.

[splatterdog]

I thought they would pull the plug on this vehicle. No go. A reman with 3yr/100k warranty is going in. A few other things are getting fixed along the way too. Can't complain, going to be a big ticket. This is still cheaper than a brand new vehicle, which was their other choice of action here. The

Surprisingly there was no mention of loud booms or othere bad noises from the driver. Exploding diffs make quite a sound. I made a pedestrian jump when I blew my second Ford 9 inch.

BTW, Honda Odyssey's have generated numerous trans complaints too.

[Petros]

BTW, Honda Odyssey's have generated numerous trans complaints too.

That is too bad, I thought the Honda trannys were pretty good, though I have no experience with the Odyssey. Our '92 Mazda MPV 4x4 has held up pretty good, despite lack of maint. No complaints. They discontinued the 4wd MPV when they went to transverse engine install, too bad, it is a great 4wd minivan. I have heard this is same auto trans in Mazda as Pathfinder and Acura. Very reliable.