41TE in 93 caravan died

My transmission in my 93 Dodge Grand Caravan died two days ago. I guess I
am fortunate as I was able to get 140+ K miles out of it. Well, since the
van had over 203K miles on it, I just dropped it off at Goodwill. Now I am
in the market for a replacement van. Can anyone advise as to whether or not
ChryCo has resolved the tranny problems for 2003 and newer minivans? I
would like to consider the ChryCo vans but only if I can be reasonabley
assured that they tranny won't die as soon as it goes out of warranty.

Michael

 

<<<My transmission in my 93 Dodge Grand Caravan died two days ago. I
guess I
am fortunate as I was able to get 140+ K miles out of it. Well, since
the
van had over 203K miles on it, I just dropped it off at Goodwill. Now
I am
in the market for a replacement van. Can anyone advise as to whether
or not
ChryCo has resolved the tranny problems for 2003 and newer minivans? I

would like to consider the ChryCo vans but only if I can be reasonabley

assured that they tranny won't die as soon as it goes out of warranty.


Michael <<<

This response is based solely on personal experience.

1989 Voyager 3.0L 4-speed auto. Rebuilt by dealer at 30,000 and again
at 70,000 miles. rebuilt by me at 140,000. Sold in 2000 at 192,000
still working well. Still on the road according to Carfax.

1996 Voyager 3.3L 4 -speed auto. Just sold with 168,000 no trans
trouble during life, save for output speed sensor, a 30 dollar part. It
did refuse to take overdrive one time for a 30 mile trip, but was fine
afterwards. Cause unknown.

2001 T&C 3.8L 4-speed auto. 79,000 miles no trans trouble so far.

Your results may vary.

As for non-transmission things...I would not consider anything but the
2001-up 3.8L. It's the only powerplant with enough guts IMHO.

 

As long as you immediately put an auxilliary transmission cooler on it, for
those years and later your fine. Make sure to have a flud change done on
it if you buy a used one.

Ted

 

I listen to a program called Goss's Garage, Pat Goss is probably the best
mechanic in the US writes for Motor Week for many years. Many questions
about automatic transmissions are asked on his show each week. The majority
of the transmission problems are caused by the drivers driving habits and
non-maintenance yes there were some bad ones too but I am speaking for the
majority of the problems.

First one of the major killers of a modern transmission is the lead foot.
People have a tendency to stomp it and rabbit off the line this is one of
the worst things you can do. You should gradually accelerate doing so will
extend the transmission life.

Once a year or 30k miles have a complete fluid flush and filter change using
the correct fluid. Some of the shops including AAMCO have installed the
wrong fluid especially in Chryslers. Climate and use has a lot to do with
transmission life along with load and towing of a vehicle.

Pat has stated that getting 60K miles out of a transmission is not uncommon
for any manufacturer before it needs an overhaul or replacement. It is all
how it is used or abused and maintained.

http://www.goss-garage.com/

Coasty

 

I would change that sentence to read as follows: "Some of the shops
including AAMCO almost always (98% of the time) install the wrong fluid
especially in Chryslers".

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

 

Pat has stated that getting 60K miles out of a transmission is not uncommon
for any manufacturer before it needs an overhaul or replacement. It is
all
how it is used or abused and maintained.


http://www.goss-garage.com/


Coasty
<<<<<<<<

60K from a transmission in standard passenger car service is pathetic.
160 to 200K would be much more reasonable.

 

Reasonable yes, but not normally the standard

Coasty

 

It is the standard for transmissions that are maintained and used properly.


Matt

 

Yep, agree with you a 100%, my wife has a 94 shadow her work car, an
automatic with a 150K on the tranny. I flush, change the fluid and filter
myself and yes I do a true flush. I check the bands at each change mike and
adjust as needed.

Coasty

 

hmmm. If he is "the best" I wonder why his shop was unable to solve
the vibration problem that I had with my Porsche 944. In fact they
pretty much told me that they were unable to feel the vibration I was
describing and pretty much suggested that I take the car somewhere else
if I wanted to have it fixed. They also stated that they flat out
wouldn't drive the car over the posted speed limit; now the vibration
becomes really pronounced around 75-80 MPH but is certainly evident at
speeds as low as 50 MPH. In their defense I will say that they did the
best darn tire balance and alignment job I've ever had, but it
certainly wasn't cheap. (Goss' Garage really exists; it's about 2
miles from my house, and I took my car there based on a) the inability
of a local Porsche shop to find the issue b) it was the closest
decent-appearing shop to my house and c) the assumption that name
recognition = better service)

I'm going to drop the car off tonight at a shop I used to use years ago
when I drove pretty much exclusively Volkswagens; hopefully this time
it'll all work out.

Now I'm not trying to "slam" Pat, by all accounts he is a pretty darn
good mechanic, I just would hesitate to use words like "best." That
said his advice in this case seems sound and also make sure you use the
factory recommended fluid.

nate

 

Since his advice is nothing more than a rehash of what is said everywhere,
I don't see that he's offering anything helpful.

Frankly, this business of 'stomping on it off the line" also merits a
mention. The
majority of men drivers do that, and want to do that, and the automakers
know
it, and design the transmissions for it. I'd say that 60K of life out of a
transmission
that was regularly "stomped off the line" is more accurate, if Pat thinks
that
60K is average lifespan, then he should be saying nothing about stomping
off the line. All the examples of transmissons I've seen that got the
150K-200K
mileage are from women who were nonagressive drivers, or old people
who choose to drive slow. And would you like to be the driver -behind-
drivers like that? I don't!

Nate, a suggestion to you if the VW place can't fix the vibration. Find a
speed shop somewhere and put your Porche on a dyno. If there's no vibration
when the car is spinning up to 70Mph then you know it's likely a frame
misalignment problem, or non-driven suspension issue. If the vibration is
present you know it's in the powertrain.

Ted

 

MY wife's 1982 240 GL Volvo has 400,000 km on the engine and transmission. We have
changed oil(s) and filters regularly, AND have replaced seals as needed.

NOW I am seriously looking at totally rebuilding the body, and powertrain. Some of
the "bull work" will be done by myself, just to "keep in touch" and save some $$. I
will probably do the tranny myself. I know the fellow who rebuilds torque converters
for the local market. He will rebuild the original tc and I will re-install it. Man,
the Volvo BW55 etc) rebuild manual (TP 30868/1) is excellent!

I have too much disposable income (!) and too many memories in this car. The boys
were growing up in it.

Some rebuilding is worth doing in my opinion. Good maintenance and operation cannot
but help with longevity.

Ken
Canada

 

I cried (!) when I totalled our '87 Reliant at about 250,000 km. The tranny was
great. I had a new camshaft and the engine ran great.

Our 82 Voyager tranny dies at over 200,000 km. A rebuild (by me and a CC
mechanic - former high school student of mine) and a rebuilt torque converter
and away it goes. $500 for a TOTAL rebuild - including the differential, etc.

Not a race car so treat it (your vehicle) appropriately. Keep the maintenance up
to "severe" standards. Change fluids and filters TOTALLY and regularly.

Just my (humble) opinion.

Ken
Canada

 

Perhaps you should be flying an airplane - OR living in a place that will screw
you around with fuel prices TRIPLE to what you are paying right now!! GET real.

I won't go into the REAL vehicle maintenance costs in those parts of the
"modern" world.

The USA is living in a "fools paradise" as far as vehicles are concerned, just
because you "can". I really wonder how you can justify such "combative' driving
behaviour on your roads when you will "save" a few seconds. save a few seconds
for what?? To go to Wal-Mart or to the local pub? Not exactly an emergency.
Just because "you want to"????

No wonder few non- North Americans bother responding (or reading) to this news
group!!

Isn't paradise wonderful

Ken
Canada

 

And it bothers us when we have memories like that,
and some idiot pulls in front of it and totals it.

 

Well I will comment that the population and population density in Canada is
much lower than the US, so with more wide open spaces and fewer people
you do not have the crowding problems on the roads there that are common
in the US. So as they say, you should talk.

But I think your wrong on that 'because we can' statement.

The cities in North America specifically the US have a big problem that
cities in most countries in the world do not have - they are all very young,
as a result most of them do not have the population density of a city in
Europe. Also there's a lot more open spaces in the US, I think many
Europeans
forget this a lot.

As a result of the lower density, particularly in Western areas of the US,
mass-transit is a losing proposition, and simply does not appeal to most
city residents.

If you go to the oldest cities in the US, such as New York, you will find
an extensive mass-transit system that the city is utterly dependent on, and
in those cities people live much like in Europe, where they ride the train
or
subway or bus. Because these older cities grew before the advent of
machine-powered transportation, living long distances away was impractcal
and property values forced building to become very dense.

But in the young cities, those have sprawled out rather than growing
vertically.
To support sprawl of this magnitude you have to have a huge number of
roads to get around, and a huge number of cars.

City planners in many states today recognize this but in order to force
vertical growth this requires restrictions on private property ownership
and what you can do with it. That is of course inherently unfair because
you have lots of situations where an existing building that was built in a
sprawling fashion 40 years ago with no restrictions, might be next to a
plot of land that was never developed, so today your trying to tell the
property owners that want to develop it today, that they cannot develop
it in the same sprawling fashion their neighbors did. And the more
effective
these restrictions at forcing vertical growth, the more onerous, and the
more pressure and support for rejecting them entirely by the general
public.

This also has a very bad effect on the practice of issuing licensing.
In a country that has effective mass-transit, you can weed out the
drivers that display the kind of obstructive and dangerous driving
that I'm referring to. When a driver insists on going 40Mph in a
55Mph zone, the police in such a country will ticket, and if the
driver doesen't get the message and keeps getting tickets, he or
she loses his license.

However in a country that does not have effective mass-transit there
is little political support for pulling drivers licenses. For example
just look at the travesty of drunk driving, in the United States if
you get busted for drunk driving, you won't permanently lose your
license. In some states people that get busted for DUII have racked
up 6 or 7 of these convictions until the day comes that they paste some
poor innocent person, and then all the sudden there's support for
pulling their licensing. As a result of this, police in the US very very
rarely issue tickets for obstructive driving even though there's lots and
lots of examples. And it is almost impossible to get an older persons
license pulled for medical reasons, even when the family of the older
person all are demanding it, if the older driver fights it. There's people
a hairs breath away from being legally blind who have drivers licenses.
And very few states require periodic retesting - they will continue to
renew drivers licenses year after year without ever calling someone
in for a test. You could be a 10 year quadrapalegic with a valid
drivers license in some cases.

And even when they do pull licenses, the penalties for driving without
one are mild.

All of this is because since there's not effective mass-transit, pulling
someone's drivers license in most cases effectively puts them in
the poorhouse.

There are a lot of people in the US who would like to change this
but your dealing with massive social inertia. It will take hundreds
of years to change these things.

It isn't a few seconds, if it was, nobody would drive agressively. It
is many minutes. If for example I did not execute passes of drivers that
were going slower than the prevailing traffic on my work commute, I
would add a minimum of 15 minutes of travel time EACH WAY.
I know this for a fact because I've timed it a few times when I was
driving on a slipping clutch that needed replacement, and I was
feather-footing
it in order to delay having to fix the vehicle. This is probably because
I'm
driving a 40 mile round-trip commute every day.

Drivers in the US fall on a bell curve in my observation. About 50% of
them get onto the road and go into 'autopilot' mode where they drive
what the prevailing traffic drives. You can see them listening to music
and playing with their ipods, talking on the cell phone, yelling at their
kids, or just zoning out as they drive down the road. Of the remaining,
25% drive agressively faster than the prevailing traffic, and about
25% of them drive obstructively slower, which 90% of the time means
they drive exactly the speed limit, no more.

Of the agressive ones, the top 20% of those are reckless and the police
pick them off for speeding with regularity, about 20% of them are expert
drivers and they know exactly when it's safe to speed and how to speed
so they never get caught, and the remainders are just bad drivers
who get picked up for speeding every 2--3 years, usually when the cops
need to temporairly increase revenue by doing a round of increased
enforcement.

Of the obstructive ones, about 20% of those are doing it because they
are making a political statement - being deliberately obstructive in
order to try to slow down traffic. Another 20% are criminals driving
with suspended or no licenses, or drunks, and they are paranoid about
getting
pulled over, and the reminders are just plain bad drivers who have zero
common sense enough to understand they are causing a hazard on the
road.

Since your interested in the justifications of the agressive drivers, well
as you
can see 80% of them just plain don't have any, just like 80% of the
obstructive
drivers just don't have any valid justifications either. But of the 20%
expert
agressive drivers, the justification is simple - the road can carry only a
certain
number of cars, and the more rapidly you get onto the road, do your
business,
and get off of the road, the more space there is for other people to be on
the road. If it wasn't for the 20% agressive expert drivers, everyone in
traffic would be spending even longer in gridlock during the rush hour, with
no increase in safety.

Ted

 

Or some of them are driving cars that have a problem and going another
20 mph just might incapacitate the car. Or some people cannot process
the road that clearly, especially at night, that is, night vision
problems. Sure they should not drive but who else is going to pay their
bills if they cannot get up and back from work?

Are you sure about that above paragraph? Or is that a rationalization
to drive aggressively? You might be right but I would like to see a
reference or some logic applied to a transportation network. I doubt
what you are saying because in gridlock no one is really moving. So how
can faster aggressive drivers reduce the load? In my experience,
aggressive or bad drivers cause a great deal of gridlock. When I sat on
the highway, not moving for one to two hours, literally stuck in place,
it was due to idiots having accidents. The idiot was probably trying to
mimic the aggressive drivers but without the concommitant skill set.
The last time was a woman driving an SUV. She was turned completely
around facing the traffic in the passing lane, obviously dazed, and
semi-conscious at best with her daughters in the back seat, saying
mommy, mommy, over and over. Everyone passed her, oblivious to her
plight, probably because they were annoyed at her for causing a massive
stoppage for about an hour in heavy traffic. Never seen anything like
that before or since. I did not see what happened but this was a toll
road, two lanes, with no exits or entrances or opposing traffic where
this happened. I can only guess she tried to pass and turned too
quickly and spun her SUV around. This occurred on a summer's day,
perfectly clear weather. Very strange.