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  #1  
Old 07-23-2008, 11:34 PM
davestlouis's Avatar
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SOT, Chrysler engineering

Unbelievable, the same people who designed some of their 90's era cars so the front bumper cover has to come off to change the battery really did an engineering snafu on my wife's 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It started running hot in traffic, I discovered that the electric fan wasn't kicking on. Sounds simple enough, check the fan and check the relay...only issue is, the relay is mounted on the frame rail, under the right headlamp. It gets worse, when the lamp is removed, the plastic headlamp mount panel is in the way. To get that off, the grille comes off, the other headlamp comes off, and the bumper cover comes off. I bought the relay at the dealer, and it had instructions inside. The instructions stated that the relay is on the LEFT side of the car, and showed line drawings to that effect. The instructions show the relay to be clearly exposed under the LEFT headlamp...even if it was on that side, the headlamp mount panel would be in the way. These people are stupid. I found a shortcut online that involved taking a 2in holesaw to the lamp mount panel, and gaining access that way. The relay is prone to failure...why on earth did they bury the silly thing where it's this tough to get to?????

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Old 07-23-2008, 11:37 PM
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I'll stick to my old benzs and Vdubs.




perfect example why.




and then you can go into the screw-on oil filter deal. have you seem where they try to mount these things now?
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  #3  
Old 07-23-2008, 11:44 PM
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I agree with the stupid battery placement. I worked for a mobile battery service. When confronted with these cars (I think it was a "Stratus" or something like that) I just told the owner they had to take it to the dealer. Let Chrysler deal with their problem.
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  #4  
Old 07-23-2008, 11:57 PM
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Thats why they are slowly dieing.
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Old 07-24-2008, 12:12 AM
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Its not so much a "relay" as a "variable resistor" it gets hot, and if the fan motors aren't perfect anymore (and even if they are) it will burn out as it gets hot from the juice going through it for the fans. It can fail in an open or closed position, usually it fails open. They mounted it on the frame rail in an attempt to dissipate heat.

The dodge caravan's suffer from the same issue. We replaced the "relay" 4 times then decided something else was wrong, bought a new radiator fan assembly, still blew out. So I mounted the new one to the frame rail with thermal grease (Arctic Silver 5, used on computer CPU's)....and I disabled one of the two electric fans. 2 years later, its still good. It runs the one fan when it needs to, and it has never gone above the normal temp level, even in hot traffic. By disabling (unplugging) one fan I cut the Amps going through the resistor by 50%, thus allowing it to not fail from too much current.

Its a huge issue with many dodge/chrysler vehicles.....yet there was/is no recall.
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  #6  
Old 07-24-2008, 02:11 AM
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Ah yes, we get a lot of those in the junkyard, as well as the GM's where you have to take the washer reservoir off to get to the battery. I don't blame the owners one bit for junking their junk. Now when the odd W108/114(<-have seen two, bought and now drive one of them)/115/116/123 comes in for dismantling, that makes me wonder WTF. We got a W124 once, but it had been rolled @327,000 miles, so I understand.
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  #7  
Old 07-24-2008, 05:43 AM
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We did a Chrysler product that the customer wanted us to replace the headlight bulb. OK,,, but the headlight had to be removed, and to remove the headlight, the bumper had to be removed. What a PITA.
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Old 07-24-2008, 04:48 PM
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  #9  
Old 07-24-2008, 11:39 PM
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On a quiet night you can hear a Chrysler rusting. MOPAR=Move Over People Are Racing.
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  #10  
Old 07-25-2008, 12:01 AM
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Sad. At one time Mopar had the best reasonably priced cars you could buy. I still want a '69 Hemi Road Runner 4spd. I actually had a '63 Dart and a '73 Chrysler Newport.

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83 300D Turbo with manual conversion, early W126 vented front rotors and H4 headlights 400,xxx miles
08 Suzuki GSX-R600 M4 Slip-on 22,xxx miles
88 Jaguar XJS V12 94,xxx miles. Work in progress.
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