It’s a few months into our Pacifica loan, and we’ve hit some bumps in the road. I took our long-termer in to the dealer to check out a number of issues staffers had been experiencing. What I expected to be one weekend without the van turned into a month-long ordeal that would not be resolved with just one visit.
About a month prior, our 2018 Chrysler Pacifica visited the dealer to have a stalling issue looked into. The engine shuts off as you come to a stop—as it normally would with the stop/start feature engaged—but as the engine cuts out you get a warning chime. This is accompanied by a number of messages on the in-gauge display saying various systems are unavailable, and the engine won’t turn over on its own as it should. To restart the car, you have to shift back to park, apply the brake, and hit the ignition button. Thankfully, this happened to me at a relatively quiet intersection near my home, so there was never any pressure to get the car started and moving again. But I can see how someone else might miss one of those steps in a panic, especially if it happens in traffic with horns blaring behind you.
On this initial visit, the dealer tested the stop/start system’s battery and determined it was good. Unable to recreate the problem, and with no fault codes activated, the service writer simply told me to come back if it happened again. Sure enough, it did—once again for me and once for social media manager Carol Ngo. And this time I had a check engine light, which validated there was indeed a problem. I was planning to take the Pacifica in again anyway for a knocking sound in the front suspension, so now I could kill two birds with one stone. Then senior photographer William Walker informed me that the heater had also gone out. Cool. Three birds.
The service advisor hooked up a diagnostic scanner and right away pulled a number of codes. This, to me, was a good sign, as it meant there were traceable leads to work with this time around. The dealer said they needed the van at least through the weekend, so I was given a rental car (covered under warranty) and told to expect a call in a few days. That first call came, but it wasn’t to deliver the news I was hoping for. They’d need the Pacifica for a few more days for diagnosis. That turned into another few more days. Then another, and then another. In total, our Pacifica was in the shop for 31 days.
The dealer at first believed the prime suspect for the stalling issue to be a failed head gasket, but that ultimately morphed into a leaking EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) cooler. How replacing that part fixed the stalling issue was lost on me, but the leaking coolant did at least explain the issue with the heater. The knocking sound was traced to the anti-roll bar and strut bushings, which led the technician to replace the bar and the left front strut. When asked why the repair took so long, my service writer chalked the delays up to the Christmas and New Year holidays, having to wait for parts from the East Coast, and the service department being busy around that time of year. The stalling issue was also difficult to pin down, despite the codes, with the dealer unable to reproduce the issue on test drives.
But even if those are all acceptable excuses, a month is still an awfully long time to go without your car. And all that lost time stings even more when you find out two of the three issues you took it in for haven’t been fixed. The knocking sound came back the next day, and the van stalled on me again about a week later. Stay tuned as our dealership saga continues.
Read more about our long-term 2018 Chrysler Pacifica:
The post 2018 Chrysler Pacifica Limited Long-Term Update 2: Dealership Woes appeared first on Motortrend.
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