POS 96T&C

Just some venting: I unfortunately own the above. Last Feb 26, the tranny with 68K miles seized. Had it replaced with a rebuilt unit, got 3/36 warranty. well, the same thing happened today, tranny has less than 12K miles on it. First thing I'm going to do after it is fixed under the warranty is to sell it and buy a reliable van like a Honda or Toyota. If there is anyone considering buying any Chrysler van, run for your life, not to mention your wallet as I will never, ever own a Chrylser again.

Reply to
bytor
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Hmm - who did your rebuild on the tranny?

The 4 speed transmissions in this year of van are known troublemakers. That is why Chrylser has released many fixes since 1996 for these along with instructions as to how to incorporate the fixes into transmissions that are being rebuilt. If the place that did the rebuild on your transmission isn't that familiar with these transmissions then they probably didn't follow the factory-recommended procedures for rebuilding the transmissions. They also probably didn't have you install a transmission cooler which has been found by many experienced Chrysler shops to be a requirement for these vans, nor did they tell you about the need for frequent fluid changes on these trans.

While you have a justified beef on the original trans blowing up at 68K, I think that your being rediculous in blaming the trans for failing the second time when clearly it wasn't properly rebuilt. Unless your towing a trailer full of a ton of cement every day, a properly rebuilt trans does not fail in 12K miles.

Ted

Reply to
Ted Mittelstaedt

Reply to
jdoe

I own a '96 T&C LXi non-POS which now has almost 173,000 miles on it. The original tranny went south at 117,000 miles and was replaced with a Chrysler rebuilt unit with the 3/36 warranty. The original tranny was dealer-serviced at

30K, 60K and 90K. At 117,000 it was completely flushed and serviced by the dealer and crapped out shortly thereafter. I cannot complain about the tranny failure because it was, and still is, a daily driver in Los Angeles stop-and-go traffic. Additionally it made three round-trips (in the heat of August each time) to Yosemite towing a loaded Coleman Chesapeake camping trailer (complete with wood for five nights and food for seven), the four of us in my family (along with all of our clothing), four bicycles, four rafts and other stuff. Additionally it did the same to Yellowstone one year and another year it hauled an over-loaded U-Haul trailer (to the point the automatic leveling suspension was not able to compelely level the van) back from Dayton, Ohio.

POS? I don't think so! Yeah, there are little things here-and-there that have needed replacing, but it has not put a dent in my wallet any more than any other vehicle would. BTW - this is our third Chrysler product (it replaced a '92 T&C w/ 87,000 miles and a '93 LeBaron LX Convertible w/ 57,000 miles that were traded in for this van). Since this van we have purchased a used '93 Jeep GC that now has over 189,000 miles on it and an '04 Pacifica AWD that now has over 9,000 miles on it.

I think if the term "POS" is to be used it should apply to how YOU treated your T&C!

Reply to
RPhillips47

I guess my 96 Grand Voyager transmission didn't get the word that it is a troublemaker as it has worked perfectly for 146,000 miles now...

Matt

Reply to
Matthew S. Whiting

I think Ted's point is well stated, no matter how well you treat a vehicle sometimes things just break, I had a bearing take a crap in a 98 Voyager 4 banger with the 3 speed auto@ 78K, normally a durable transmission..... I did all the right stuff had the fluid and filter and bands adjusted at 30 (bought it used with 30) 45, 60 and 75K miles,,, Chrysler's fault,,, could be, I am an old man, don't drive hard or pull anything or carry big loads, just wife and me (well not so BIG loads) .... BUT

Sometimes stuff just breaks, it is a machine, and it does get used, . one just grows tired of hearing how come my headgasket blew @ only 120K miles and everyone else gets 200K... .happens... many many variables, maintenance is only one of them, and driving technique is only another, but there are so many more..

Sorry people, if you drive your car long enough sooner or later (hopefully later) something is going to break and you are going to have to fix it or get rid of the car... my vote nowdays is to fix things usually as I can buy a LOT of repairs for half the price of any new vehicle on the road..

Just my $.02

Ted

Reply to
Ted

I'll second that, with another 96 GV (trailer tow package) with 88168 one-owner miles. They had to replace some kind of pump in the transmission a while ago, and I've had problems with the factory transmission cooler lines leaking, but I drive it very carefully and expect to for years. I think all automobiles suck about equal. MB

Reply to
Michael Blomquist

It was a remanufactured unit from Chrysler. I saw the packing and the label., so again, it was Chrysler who did not do it properly.

Reply to
bytor

dealer-serviced at

Reply to
bytor

dealer-serviced at

Reply to
bytor

I wouldn't be too sure of that. While others may know better I would suspect that Chrysler subs out their trans remanufacturing to a different company than the one that makes the brand new ones. In any case my point was that you can have a great design but poor execution - in short, it's not easy to draw valid conclusions about how good the design is just by looking at the results alone.

Unfortunately one other thing that people many times don't discover is that there is a difference between a remanufactured unit and a rebuilt unit.

Rebuilds are done individually one at a time. As a result the rebuilder if he is good, can pay a lot more attention to your trans, and can make better decisions about what parts to retain and what to scratch.

Remans on the other hand are done on an assembly line, in quantity. If the line is run well and the line manager knows his shit then you get pretty good and consistent units out of it. Unfortunately it is more common that the people on the line are not paid all that well and are not all that good at what they are doing, and the line manager is under a lot of pressure to get units out the door in quantity. So the remanufacturing on the units tends to be done in a far more strict set of guidelines, and if the line spec says to not replace a part, if the core on the line has a failed one of those parts, the whole core gets scrapped out and if that happens too much it interferes with production, so there's some pressure to let marginal parts go by, where a rebuilder would have replaced them just to be sure.

Now, I can't fault you for going back to Chrysler for a replacement transmission, I understand that when a person has a vehicle down unexpectedly, they want to get it back up ASAP and don't want to take the time checking around trans shops and getting references and all that who-ha. So the dealer becomes the default choice. But let me just point out a few things to you - for the future, facts of the car life as it were.

Number one - no automaker really wants their customers to prolong a vehicle's life with heroic measures - ie: replacing large subassemblies like an engine or transmission. From Chrysler's point of view, vehicles manufactured in 1996 are dinosaurs and they are more than happy to see them go to the Great Wrecking Yard in the Sky. In fact, the only people who really want to see you keep your van on the road for many happy years after the warranty is the REST of the automotive industry, the countless subasembly suppliers, private mechanics, and parts industries and everybody OTHER than the actual automaker themselves.

So the result of this is that to be perfectly honest about it, the rule of thumb is to take anything out of warranty to someplace OTHER than the dealership. Now I know there's plenty of exceptions to the rule and plenty of dealerships out there with really teriffic service departments who don't deserve to be tarred but they are exceptions to the rule - the majority of dealership service places simply don't see many vehicles that are that old. It's more common to take the older vehicles to mechanics running their own shops.

Number two is that if your the kind of person who gets fazed by a trans rebuild on an 8 year old vehicle, you honestly are not the right kind of person who should be owning an older car that's off warranty. Owning older vehicles (or continuing to own your new car past 7-8 years) is making a choice to take a gamble. You are gambling that your going to get an extra 50,000 miles out of the thing for essentially $0 car payment, vs losing the book value of the vehicle if something major does happen. (like a trans job) The odds are most definitely in your favor, but there is _always_ a risk. In this case you lost the gamble. If you continue to make this kind of gamble the rest of your car-owning life, in the majority of cases your gonna win. No question. But, you have to have the nerves or willingness to do this, and if your being rattled enough to sell the van after a trans failure, then you simply don't have what it takes to take this kind of gamble. Rest easy, though, there's nothing really wrong with this. The vast majority of new car owners don't have what it takes to own an older used vehicle either - they prefer the comfort of owning an on-warranty vehicle to the uncertainty of owning a used one and saving a lot of money over their lifetimes in car payments.

So, knowing all this let me tell you one other thing - you made a big mistake replacing the trans in this van. What you should have done is the day after the van's trans blew chunks, you should have walked into the Chrysler dealership and traded it in on a brand new T&C van. You would have ended up with the security and comfort of a really quite long and generous new vehicle warranty, and the dealership would have probably given you a pretty good trade in allowance, because even though the trans was blown up in it, it is after all a lot cheaper for a Chrysler dealership to replace a trans since they don't charge themselves a markup on labor, and since the mileage of the vehicle is so low, a dealership could get top dollar for it used, once they replaced the trans and cleaned it. Almost certainly the trade in would be more than what you are going to get for the van on the used market, less the cost of the replacement tranny. You might even consider trying this ploy with the dealership even now, as since the replacement trans blew up at 12K, you have good "guilt leverage" as my mother says.

Ted

Reply to
Ted Mittelstaedt

Chrysler does not remanufacture parts. The trannies are sub-ed out to different manufacturers that must test there trannies thouroghly before sending out. Chrysler actually got rid of a few re-man suppliers in the past

6 years because of to many defects. I worked at Mopar in sales/Marketing and I know engineers at Mopar had to visit these Re-man Facilities 3 times a year.
Reply to
hartless

Bytor,

If the problem turns out to be the transmission, then I would very much expect the warranty to cover this and your dealer to go to bat for you, especially given the $ you spent with them recently. Yes, it's very possible that you got a defective rebuilt unit and Chrysler should stand behind it, but it is also possible that the problem is caused by a defective sensor or something else outside of the actual transmission that was replaced.

I agree with you given the time frame and the usage of the vehicle you described, that it is not likely that the problem is due to driver abuse.

Do let us all know the outcome. I think much of the negative response you have received is because you posted with the "POS" reference in the subject line prior to knowing the root cause of this second failure while you were (understandably) upset.

Bob

Reply to
Bob Shuman

Well Ted, you did it again...

Don't know how you managed to remember all those points and put them in one post, but "Bully" for you.. excellent show...

It all boils down to money doesn't it... Some people like to spend it on cars,,,"nice shiny new ones" and there are others that take pride in being a "cheap" as possible in keeping the old ones running as long as practical...and you sure are right about the "some people can't take the pressure" of owning an older vehicle... I have 2 brothers just like that ...

Things do wear out and sometimes you get a surprise none of us likes,,,,and something just breaks, hell I don't know how many parts are in a car or even a transmission, but I suspect if there was anywhere near a 1% failure rate on these overall, these boards would be a whole lot busier than they are..

Another $.02

Keep going like this I won't be able to afford even a junk ! LOL..

Reply to
Ted

Often the OEM manufacturer doesn't do the remanufacturing of their own transmissions. I don't know if Chrysler does or doesn't, but there is a good chance they don't.

Matt

Reply to
Matthew S. Whiting

That is the most likely possibility. Did both transmissions fail the same way? It is remote, but there is always the possibility of a misalignment between engine and transaxle that could be putting side stresses on the transmission shaft that it wasn't designed for. This is probably quite a long shot, but I've seen in the past cases where the back of an engine or bell housing wasn't machined perpendicular to the drive axis and this can cause repeated failures of good transmissions. However, if something like this is the cause, the failure mode will be the same for each transmission.

Matt

Reply to
Matthew S. Whiting

Thanks for the thoughts. I think I'm going to take your advice and get rid of it in the very near future. It's not worth the risk.

Reply to
bytor

Bob,

Chrysler is going to replace th transmission, however, even though their warranty card clearly states "ALL PARTS and LABOR", Chrysler is only going to cover about 1/4 of the labor cost to replace it. This, in my opinion, is like rubbing salt in a wound. I guess they really don't care about their customers if they won't even honor their own warranty. Any thoughts on how to make them pay for the entire labor cost without a big legal battle?

Reply to
bytor

Yep, I learned that in the school of hard knocks.

What people forget all the time with vehicles is that if you are driving them they are NOT INVESTMENTS!! They are money sinks. If you are fool enough to dump a lot of money into them you end up losing a lot of money.

Well, when your 85 years old and you have no retirement I guess you have the memories of driving shiny new cars, right? I'd rather have the money then.

There isn't really any "long as practical" If you live in the right climate where they don't salt the roads, and you don't get into an accident, a vehicle can last a lifetime. Really. I've been in and out of wrecking yards for over

20 years now and there's been a marked change in the quality of cars now coming into yards.

Years ago there were only 2 kinds of cars that ever came into wrecking yards. The first were the smashed up ones, the second were ones that were ugly as sin and had all the paint peeled off and panels hanging by rust threads.

Today there's a large percentage of vehicles that are coming into wrecking yards that look literally like they are just about brand new. These are 8 year old vehicles that have 100K+ on the odometer, look immaculate inside and the paint is still in excellent shape - and they have a blown engine or a blown tranny. Or the engine simply runs "funny" and nobody has been able to figure out why. Some of the smarter yards pick the best of these and do engine swaps with smashed vehicles then roll them over into used car lots, but the majority of these vehicles just get dragged out to the yard and picked apart.

It's really a paradise in the used car market for the buyers, now. Take vans. In a lot of areas of the country (like where I live) you can go find a early

90's T&C or Caravan that has engine trouble for less than $500. For another $4K you can have a shop completely remove and replace the entire power train - that's engine and trans - with rebuilt units done by top of the line rebuilders in your city. And both of them will give you 3 if not 5 year warranties on the subassemblies. Then for another $1000 you can have an auto upholstery shop completely tear out and replace the interior with new carpet, headliner, and reupholster the seats and also have a glass place pull and reseal all the fixed windows in the vehicle. For maybe $5K if your careful you can have a vehicle that is going to last the same mileage as a new vehicle, have nearly the same warranty, and smell like a new car to boot - and cost a quarter or less than the cost of a new car. Even if you finance the vehicle with a bank at a higher interest rate than a car dealer will give you, you still will pay far less money in total and have a lower monthly payment than a new car. And on top of that if you take pictures of the restoration and save all the receipts, that will override book value if you then carry comprehensive insurance on it, so if it gets smashed up, the insurance will pay out on it. And even better will be that you will be dumping your money into the local economy, not sending it overseas.

People just don't understand the markup in new vehicles. Sure, I know that the automakers don't see a lot of that money per unit because their labor and r&d costs now are so high. But, the fact of it is that the automakers and the new car buyers have all decided they don't want to buy cheap, mass produced cars anymore like the VW Beetle was. So instead of running a few basic car models that they don't have to completely retool for every year, and that can be sold for half the cost of what cars cost today, the automakers are all forced into this plethora of models and retooling and doublespeak as if a station wagon isn't a station wagon.

I just hope that by the time the baby boomers have all gone to the grave that the economy isn't totally wrecked. It's that group and their cash that's driving a lot of this.

Ted

Reply to
Ted Mittelstaedt

Amen to that! Provided it is a good solid car to start with.

I've been driving the same car since 1980. 430,000 miles as of last week. I've bought newer cars for the "family" car and for my wife (although the newest has nearly 210,000 miles), but I'm going to keep my old '73 until the wheels fall off.. then I'll put 'em back on and keep it some more.

Reply to
Steve

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