1998 Dodge Intrepid ES

Hello all!

I just bought a 1998 Intrepid. It has the 3.2l v6. I have a few
questions about it that I'm hoping someone here can help me with. For
the most part, it looks and drives great, but I do need to do pads &
rotors all the way around. It might need new tires too, but we'll see
later.

The car has electronic climate control, but it isnt working. The guy I
bought it from said there was some "chip" that was needed. Does that
sound right? If so, where is it located?

Also, is there anything else I should be looking at?

Thanks!
Doug

 

For the climate control, you need a new control head unit - under $50 at
junk yards. Should find a bunch of them on www.car-part.com. Usually
the problem is cracked solder joints in a couple of places on the
circuit board inside the unit. But for $35 to $50, you might as well
get another, but it may have the same problem. At least then, you'd
have a spare and could try to repair the first one. The soldering
required is very delicate - easy to ruin the unit if you aren't somewhat
skilled at delicate soldering.

How many miles? Imperative that you replace timing belt, its tensioner,
and water pump at around 100k-105k miles. The engine is an interference
engine, meaning damage if the timing belt breaks. Around $600-900 job
parts and labor.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

Depending on what you mean. If the control head works and air is flowing
from the dash vents you may just need some R134 put into the system to get
the correct temp you are desiring. That vehicle is known to have leaky
evaporators. What is the mileage?

Glenn Beasley
Chrysler Tech

 

Besides the head unit, it may be the blower motor power module (it's an
electronic module that does on the automatic temperature control (ATC)
system what the resistor module does on the manual temperature control
(MTC) system. It's located on the HVAC unit. If that is what's bad, it
may be due to the blower motor pulling too much current due to wear and
age - if you replace that module and it goes bad in a few weeks or
months, the next step would be replacing it (again) along with the
blower motor itself.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

Thanks Bill. Would the blower motor work if that were the issue? There
is no display on the haed unit, although I can turn on the heat and
change blower motor speed.

Doug

 

OK - that's the kind of info. you should have given in your first post -
Glenn and I were working from a pretty vague description of the problem.

With the new info., it is clear that the problem is indeed the head unit
- the bad solder joints that I first mentioned.

This photo
http://images109.fotki.com/v783/photos/4/42816/3749556/IMG_0834b-vi.jpg
shows the area of the circuit board that myself and at least one other
person on LH car forums separately determined to have the bad solder
connections. The three larger, blue rectangular parts (resistors) in
the upper right corner needed to be resoldered in both cases - they are
in the display circuit. I'm only showing you that in case you have the
equipment and skills to solder it. The unit has to be disassembled to
do it.

If there's any doubt, again, I would suggest just buying one from a junk
yard.

Or go to the forums at www.dodgeintrepid.net and contact a guy there who
posts under the name TorontoFireCaptain. He is an LH car enthusiast and
has guite a stock of in demand parts (like this one) that he has
collected from junk yards. He has an impeccable reputation there for
honest and fair dealing - I've bought a few items from him myself. He
will have personally tested the unit before shipping it.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

Yup bad head

 

Thank you gentlemen! Sorry for being vague at first. I'll take it
apart tomorrow and see what it looks like.

Doug

 

Bill & Glenn - Thanks!

Your advice was dead on. The only obvious crack was on the top
resister, one side only. I re-touched all three resisters anyways.
It's working again.

Total time spent was less than 20 minutes.

Thanks again,
Doug

 

You're welcome! I did that repair on one of my Concordes about 2-1/2
years ago, and it's still working perfectly. Got a little too much heat
into two of the joints and the foil floated off the board - used jumper
wires to patch those.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')