Transmission Paranoia

[tato-head]

I'm a new user of this board, and noticed immediately the number of posts dealing with major trans problems.

I have a 99 Gr. Caravan with 3.3 V6, 90k miles. I've only had one trans problem, when it went into "limp mode" and had to have a new "speed sensor". I've had a trans fluid flush performed yearly.

After reading these posts, I'm terrified. Is my vehicle a time bomb waiting to go off? The family budget couldn't take a $2000 hit right now.

Any advise appreciated.

[rentalrick]

its $3000

B A I L ! ! ! ! !


and get on your knees after the junk is gone and ask transmissiongawd to give the chrysler team what they deserve right up the ###

[RexNfx400]

Any car with a overdrive or a front wheel drive is pretty much $2000 to $3000, in my area. Which is basically any vehicle produced since '82. They (A604/41TE) seem to have major failure between 100,000 to 125,000 miles. It does very with driver habits. No amount of service helps. Most of the time its hard parts failure.
Any person who owns (most) any vehicle with about 100k miles needs to be prepared to go broke/in dept on repairs. You also hear more bad then good because of the amout of units sold. More sold equals more fail.

Stay cool.

[Flashfox]

My '95 3.0L Caravan blew its transmission at 98,000 miles. It was working fine then one day, it started to slip, then progressively got worse during the week. By the weekend, it was having problems shifting into gear and it would jerk. Fluid level was OK and looked good... transmission was rapidly dying.

The result: a $1800 "unplanned expense".

Seems like the 100k mile mark is where a lot of Caravan transmissions seem to fail... it my case, it was three months after my extended warranty expired ;-(

[calgary_redneck]

Ya the 604/606 is far from a rugged design more of a time bomb. Rex is absolutely right, is oftain hard parts that fail with these planetary gears exc...which bump up the price of a rebuild as well. The last one I rebuild required 2 new planetary assemblies plus the usual masterkit bushing clutch pacs seals exc...and this was one that was in remarkably good shape

[Creative]

Calgary Redneck ..... Ah the last time I was going to Calgary I threw the diff pin thur the case .. Spider gears went to ... and I coated the car behind me with oil and parts ..... at 107K the A604 71TE's are garbage ..... So are the A606 42LE's ((( same trash pile new name and few new parts )))

And since you rebuild are there any major differences in the tranmissions from say 89 90 to 99,2K other then the TCM's and TCM software ??? just wondering before I go pulling a bunch of trannies ...

Thanx

Creative

[Creative]

Oh and they are $2640 CDN from dodge .. if your doing the install ..... or about 12 hours labor if they are ....