Help - Diagnostic Bus not working!

After authorizing the dealer to repair the bus, they now informed me that the bus is working and doesn't require repair. Now I'm getting the run-around on the Chrysler repair warranty. Makes me want to buy a Honda or Toyota.

Oh, you would rather get the runaround from Honda or Toyota when they goof up something like this, eh? Because that's what happens with them too in these situations. And keep in mind your not "working with Chrysler" your working with the dealer. Anyone, even you, can walk into the dealer parts counter and buy a Chrysler reman transmission over the counter and take it home and install it yourself. The factory can do the best reman job in the world but if the techs at the dealership are bozos, they can screw it up. And also keep in mind the dealer that your working with is NOT the bozos that installed this reman transmission. For all you know they used a hot glue gun instead of bolts to mount the transmission! So have some more sympathy for the dealer that's working on it, they are cleaning up someone else's mess and that's never fun.

When they replaced the transmission, did they replace the transmission computer? Check the invoice and see if they did. They may not have properly set the pinion factor. If they couldn't get their DRB scanner to work with the CCD bus connector then they may have just slapped in a "reman" computer and left it at the defaults.

Sometimes the socket that the DRB scanner plugs into gets loose and the tech plugs the DRB scanner in, and the weight of the cable hanging on the connector pulls it out a few seconds later enough for it to not make contact. If the tech knew what they were doing they would check that.

Unfortunately, your in a hard place here. When a vehicle breaks down 1200 miles from home with a major failure of this magnitude, most people have limited options. With the Blue Book on a 95 GC, you literally would probably have been better off just trading it in at the dealership you had it towed to, and buying a '97 or later GC with a warranty on it. Some people (like myself) might have found some convenient place to park the thing, then flown home and rented a car dolly then driven back with my other vehicle that has a hitch on it, and towed it home. But spending $3,000 on any repair at a repair shop that's 1200 miles away is a huge mistake, in my opinion.

Also more importantly, my brother-in-law works at a Dodge dealership and they rebuild these transmissions. I would expect that any decent Chrysler or Dodge dealership would be able to do so as well. In my opinion you would have been better off having the transmission that was in your van rebuilt rather than getting it exchanged for a reman. The first clue that you were NOT dealing with one of Chrysler's "best independent" dealers was that this so-called best dealer couldn't even rebuild a transmission that is one of the most common transmissions Chrysler uses! Ask the current dealer your working with, I'd bet they can rebuild them.

If you post more specific info as to what the problem is we might be able to offer suggestions.

Ted

And keep in mind your not "working with

transmission

computer

The Computer was reflashed, but not replaced. The Bus was working, and now it is again. The transmission was rebuilt 55,000 mi earlier by another dealer. I had it back to him 2 years later when the pump was whinning and he said the pressures were low, but it was out of warranty. He recommended a reman to do the job right.

I thought of that, but we (wife, 2 children and I) were on a 1 week vacation. I also considered renting a U-haul and a dolly, and towing it home. The van was still drivable at that time, but it was slipping and shifting poorly because of low pump pressure. The low pressure was probably the O-ring around the converter that I had leak on another Chrysler with the A604.

Ted, your right and that's a good idea! I went to the largest Chrysler dealer (according to them) in Orlando, FL just so that I had a warranty at home.

dealers was

The dealership I worked with in Orlando, FL appears to be much more competent than the one in Bloomfield Hills, MI. They promised the job would be done in 1 day and it was. I realize in hindsight that this may sound silly, but it was important not to ruin the entire vacation. The dealer in MI had my car 4 days, didn't call me back as promised, couldn't diagnose which half shaft is worn without actually replaceing them and declared that the diagnostics bus wasn't working. Only after I agreed to pay $160 to repair the bus did they try it again and mysteriously found it works fine.

Ted, you sound very knowledgeable and have some good suggestions. Thank you. I'm frustrated with Chrysler transmissions and the problems I've had with them. I've learned a lot about the A604 from having 2 Chrysler vehicles that use them. I like to maintain my cars and keep them for many years. I've been a Mopar fan for many years, but these last 2 Chrysler vehicles have suffered from some poor designs and substandard OEM parts. I have had to "replace" the transmissions more frequently than I replace the sparkplugs! The '89 Plymouth Acclaim required 4 transmissions (215,000 mi when I donated it) and this '95 GC is on it's 3rd with 165,000mi. The O-ring on the converter has been the problem on many of the A604 failures. It's a shame that Chrysler makes over $800 on the rebuild kits alone, and they apparently sued the company that made a better O-ring.

The transmission and engine in any car over $25k should last at least

100,000mi with normal maintainence. Only the 4th A604 in my Acclaim lasted 90,000 without a "limp". It had the better aftermarket O-ring and was still working with ~95,000 miles on it when I donated it. Many Chrysler cars have very low resale values because of the A604/A606 failures that are all too common.

- Duane

"pump whining" is NOT caused by low pressures, it is caused by improper torque converter installation. What happened is that when they separated the transmission from the engine the first time around they replaced the torque converter - and the new converter was slightly "thinner" than the old one. As a result when the transmission was re-mated to the engine, there was too much clearance between the flexplate and the converter, so when the converter was tightened down to the flexplate, it was pulled too far out of the transmssion.

If this happens they are supposed to separate the transmission again enough to install shims (washers can be used) on the converter bolts. This adds time to the install process and is annoying as you can imagine.

If the converter is pulled too far out the front pump bearing wobbles and causes the whine eventually, and the bearing fails early.

Someone was rushing the job and pulled the old "if it's good enough for government it's good enough" attitude and essentially knocked 50,000 miles of life out of what might have otherwise been a perfectly good rebuild.

There's pros and cons to a rebuild vs remanufacture. Unfortunately most of the pros of a reman are pros for the shop, and most of the cons of a reman are cons for the customer.

Another thing to keep in mind with rebuild vs reman and that is what I call the "value add" of the job.

There's basically 3 major value-adds to any transmission job. The first is the diagnostic of whether or not it can be fixed in-vehicle or whether it needs to come out. The second is the actual work of in-out. The third is the actual work of tearing it down and rebuilding or remanufacturing it.

By far the most profitable value-add is the rebuild/reman. What this means is that the orginazation that does the rebuild gets the largest chunk of profit money. So, the upshot is that if a repair shop never rebuilds the transmission and just buys remans all the time, the bulk of the profit of the job isn't going to the repair shop, it's going out the door to someone else. Thus for the shop to make money, they can't pay a lot to their people, this in turn drives away skilled mechanics and attracts the unskilled parts-changing mechanics.

This "follow the money" philosophy is in all businesses and markets. It is why you don't generally find experts checking in the grocery stores, but you might find them working for the grocery distributors, and your definitely going to find them working for the manufacturers of the products in the grocery store.

When hiring people and companies to do jobs for you, if you try to get as close as possible to the folks getting the biggest value add out of the product you are buying, your going to be dealing with far more knowledgeable people. This doesen't matter much with a product like milk, which is why everyone buys it from the grocery store. But it does matter with any product or service that is complex.

repeat after me "it's just a box with wheels that gets me places"

Beware getting emotionally involved in a vehicle purchase. You could have sent the wife and kids off for 3 hours to play and handled the entire thing yourself. And as a benefit that would give the wife something to complain about for the next 3 years (being excluded from the vehicle purchase) and you have to give wives things to bitch about every once in a while to keep them happy, or they stop thinking your a typical asshole male, and that really bugs them. ;-)

Hindsight and armchair quarterbacking is easy I know. Fortunately I've never been in the car hotseat on a vacation yet, but I've watched my dad sweat bullets a few times years ago when my parents were shuttling the family around on auto vacations. Taking that shortcut through New Mexico might have seemed a great idea at the time, but it's a guarenteed coronary when your 60 miles from anything that can remotely be called a village, city, town or cellular tower and the alternator light goes on. And it's raining. And the last vehicle you saw going the other way was 3 hours ago. Filled with Mexicans fresh from over the border. And your wife is telling you to pull over and wait for the police to come help out. (fortunately for us, by age 15 I knew enough about cars to guess the fan belt had snapped and to tell him to turn off the lights and accessories and just keep going)

Ah, but it wouldn't have been ruined for wife and kids, just for you. ;-)

Your welcome. I've been interested in these transmissions ever since we bought our first minivan, it is a design that actually uses a car computer for something other that stupid bullcrap that nobody cares about. And I had to read up on them when I did the in-and-out on the transmission in our '94 T&C.

I wouldn't put a lot of stock in stories like that. The Chrysler transmission manual only has 2 o-ring redesigns listed on the front hub, both in 1989.

Here's the problem with the Ultradrive in a nutshell: Big heavy vehicle with lots of torque, tiny tiny space to put a transmission into. They basically stuffed a transmission that has hundreds lbs of torque going through it into an area about the size of a square foot. Then to make things even more fun they insisted on throwing an extra gear into that space. And a differential right next to it. Literally, you can hardly get your head into the space occupied by the transmission, once you pull it out.

The Ultradrive has been out since 1989 so we now have a lot of history to look back on and see what was wrong. For starters, unquestionably any A604 manufactured before 1996 has a snowballs chance of surviving past 100Kmi. espically in a minivan. You hear a few stories from now and then about the miracle transmission that lasted 150K mi, but people remember and repeat those stories because they are so rare. There's tons of '95 and earlier vans for sale used these days with the label "transmission trouble" in the description. The Chrysler factory transmission book lists dozens of parts redesigns on these earlier Ultradrives.

Secondly there's the fluid issue. Early Ultradrives had Dexron stamped on the dipsticks although it was never a factory fill in these transmissions. Chrysler itself went through several ATF formulations before arriving at ATF +4, which was about a -decade- after the trans was introduced. It also didn't help that the fluid change interval schedule published early on was far too infrequent. Chrysler also found programming mis-assumptions in the trans computer which caused the fluid to wear out faster. And last but not least, in the earlier pre-96 minivans, the stock trans fluid cooler is inadequate.

All of these problems have answers, and the aftermarket has come up with rebuild kits that work very well. The problem is that these transmissions are a minority compared to GM products, and most rebuilders don't have a lot of experience with them. But there are many that do very good jobs. When I put in my rebuilt A604 last summer, it came with a year warranty, and it was rebuilt locally, not by Chrysler. You can see pictures of the process here:

Ted