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Vans & Minivans Chrysler Town & Country/Dodge Grand Caravan Chrysler Town & Country: Starting/Stalling/Idling Problems
156 messages, Last post on Oct 09, 2009 at 7:02 AM
You are in the Chrysler Town & Country/Dodge Grand Caravan Forum. Your Host is Karens
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Replying to: francin (Aug 13, 2007 5:13 am)
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Replying to: francin (Aug 13, 2007 5:40 am) Do yourself a favor and get the instrumentation panel, ie... circuit board, its about $400 and make the dealer program it for you. Without a charge, since you have already paid for services/repairs that were not needed. Fortunately, for me, I had my mechanic do it for free. He happens to work for a Chrysler dealer. My starting problem has not occured since I changed the board. Good Luck Miz |
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This is going to be somewhat long so for the faint hearted you may turn away now.  I have owned a 99 Town & Country Limited for about five years now, which I bought from a family friend with less than 50,000 miles on it. He was selling it because his wife had died and he had no use for her vehicle anymore. I bought it for what the dealer was going to give him on a trade for his new car. I have always had reservations about owning Chrysler products due to the horror stories that I have heard throughout my life. I decided to purchase this vehicle due to the immaculate condition of the vehicle and knowledge of the owner and ownership history. It was a local car and was completely serviced by our local dealer. On the day I went over to pick it up from our family friend, it started and stalled numerous times. It finally wouldn’t do anything so we had it towed to the dealer and was fixed under warranty. Needless to say this problem persisted time after time, sometimes not reoccurring for months, each time the dealership stating and reassuring me that, "They found the problem this time", each time tying it to a different part that they would replace under the warranty. The problems were always the same, the car wouldn’t start at times, the dash lights and gauges were inoperable at times, the car would stall or want to die while driving, and numerous times the entire dash would go completely blank. Then my warranty expired. I was now the recipient of each consecutive problem, diagnosis, and replaced part to the tune of Thousands of dollars, not unlike the stories that I have read on many blogs throughout the years. Believe it or not I still own the car. My thought was to get it running right and sell it with a clear conscience. I would never want to sell a car with this problem to someone else. I spoke to the dealership and the owner of the dealership who knows the car well and they stated that I should trade it in with them for a new vehicle. He also stated that he wouldn't be able to give me anything for it with its history. I was amazed that he would acknowledge this to me personally, the Owner of the dealership. He did say that trading it would be the best way to handle this situation. The only problem with this is that I wouldn't own another Chrysler product. As I have been sitting here reading through all of the blogs looking for an answer to my problem, I see my vehicles signs and symptoms duplicated over and over. I have thought about all of the people out there who, like me, have spent thousands and thousands of dollars of their hard earned money, not fixing anything, all with one hope in mind...That the car they bought in good faith would just do what it was designed to do, get them where they need to go. I, my wife and our now four children have been stranded, terrified and bilked out of much of our precious time and money. I have tried to resolve this issue with the dealership and with Chrysler directly. Chrysler either refers you to the dealerships, which are all independently owned and operated, or just hangs up on you. I have documented all of these instances with emails, phone calls, and recommendations from my own mechanic who is probably one of the best mechanics that I have run into in my personal 25 years of owning cars. He had to take it to the dealership himself because he couldn't figure out why the car would stay running after removing the entire key and ignition from the vehicle. He told me that the power to the ignition is back feeding itself from one or more locations for this to even be possible. He also stated that in all of his years of being a mechanic, he has never seen this. I have replaced the PCM, ECM, the fuse box, control panel, instrument panel gauge set, battery, ignition, wiper motor, and clock spring, sometimes more than once, and had the vehicle evaluated numerous times. My mechanic said that the wiring harness should be replaced, but stated that he is not sure if that would ensure the problem would be fixed due to the numerous electrical abnormalities that he has found with the wiring of the vehicle. I believe that Chrysler is well aware of these problems and refuses to acknowledge them due to the ton of revenue that it produces for them on an annual basis from each of us, and the insurmountable amount of money that it would cost them for the recall. I would love to find an attorney firm or group who would be willing to take the case and a thousand or so helpless victims that would band together and get what we all originally wanted...a vehicle that would drive with normal maintenance and the average occasional item that would go wrong that needed to be repaired. If anyone reads this and would like to send me your information, I will reciprocate and maybe we can get something done for everyone of us who has been misled, misdiagnosed, and overcharged for parts and labor we never needed and so ultimately our voices can finally be heard. For all of those who think they have fixed their vehicle because it’s been running fine for 6-8 weeks, I have had a month or two, sometimes three between shutoffs and stalls and now after five years it will just stop whenever it feels the need. They call it an intermittent electrical problem that they are “unable to duplicate”, however, they always get their diagnostic and parts and labor fees, even when they can't give you a diagnosis, and haven’t fixed the problem. How crazy is that. Could any of us run a business like that??? Best of Luck to all of you who seek a remedy to your continuous ongoing problems.
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Replying to: mjparisi (Jul 14, 2008 8:15 am) 
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Replying to: mjparisi (Jul 14, 2008 8:15 am)
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Replying to: jpf (Jul 15, 2008 7:15 am)
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Replying to: mjparisi (Jul 16, 2008 3:42 pm) |
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Replying to: cstrak (Aug 31, 2007 2:19 pm) |
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Replying to: mele503 (Apr 24, 2008 10:32 am) |
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Replying to: judger1 (May 01, 2008 12:32 am) |
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