radon360

One more thing, make sure that you have the middle row of seats adjusted all the way back.

We have an Evenflo, model somethingoranother. We have ours usually located behind the driver's seat. My wife has no problem with it, but she's short enough that she has the seat all the way forward. I ride with the seat all the way back. The driver's seat interferes when loading when all the way back, but it's not impossible to have the seat there and sits properly once the seat is locked in. I will admit that prefer my seatback a little more upright than most and don't ride with it "homey style." My friend has a Graco, model somethingoranother. I've noticed that their car seat requires slightly more clearance than the Evenflo. All that said, we took our car seat with us when we went shopping. The Dodges all put the LATCH rings within easy reach and visibility (my RAM, too). The imports buried them where you couldn't get at them unless you had small hands and were adept with working with tactile feedback for installation. On top of this, we couldn't get our seat installed in a RAV4 unless the driver's seat was fully forward, and then it still interfered with placement and removal. The Subaru was a total joke when it came to this endeavor. After ten minutes, I gave up on trying to connect the LATCH and used the belt instead, then even with the driver's seat fully forward, the base never had a chance of sitting flat when the seat was installed. Unfortunately, the only vehicles that seemed offer more clearance were full-size SUVs and the minivans such as the Grand Caravan/Town and Country. You've got three possible positions to choose from, so some experimentation may be in order, I guess.

Don't worry, I'm told it's a very simple fix (a tie wrap or two). Consult your dealer. They should have detailed instructions anyway.

Just a quick note about this. I found the 10mm diameters to be a little bit loose in the clips, but the clips do have a lot of "manual adjustment" in them. Beam angle isn't a critical issue since you only need light coming out of one side of the bulb and the clear cover has a fair amount of diffusion already designed into it. Have fun!

Rob, to answer your questions: First, the fade remains unaffected. I suspect this is because that instead of just slowly dropping the voltage (think analog), they use something called pulse-width modulation (PWM) to fade the cabin lights. PWM is much easier to implement from a digital control than to perform a digital to analog conversion for the control.** While PWM can be smoothed to closely approximate a steady DC voltage, it can be applied raw in this application to get the same effect without anyone noticing the difference. Wikipedia has an in-depth article on how it works, but the less technically-inclined will gloss over after the first glance. Basically think of someone switching a light switch on and off. They are doing it so fast that you don't even see the light flicker. To get the fade effect, they slowly increase the amount of time that they leave the switch in the off position, and proportionally decrease the amount of time they leave the switch in the on position. They keep doing this until the time that they have the switch in the on position decreases to zero. That's how the lights fade with PWM. You uniformly reduce the average power, instead of just the voltage, delivered to the bulb/LED so that you get a uniform response regardless of whether your light source responds linearly (incandescent filament) or non-linearly (LED). Second, LEDs emit light from similar principles to that of fluorescents. This means that their light characteristics remain fairly constant regardless of how much power they are consuming in contrast to an incandescent whose color temperature varies with how hot (and resultingly bright) the filament is made. The one exception is if you significantly overdrive an LED, but then other things are happening inside the LED, including damage. Maybe that's more than you were looking for in an answer! **Though in this case, a simple RC circuit could be used to drive a power transistor for a true analog control. The fade curve would no longer be linear in this case.

I'd like to think that you're right about being proactive, forthcoming and ethical with fixing this potential problem, but there's other strong motivations, too, such as making simple accounting sense. Paying dealer techs for 20 minutes of time (let's say $30 for 20 minutes) to install a 10 cent tie wrap on several thousand cars is still a heck of a lot cheaper (say maybe $250,000 overall) than ONE lawsuit from the resulting damage...even if they managed to somehow get it dismissed (corporate attorneys don't come cheap). Let alone whatever government fines that some bureaucrat could possibly find to assess. As for the grinding/cavitating noise when turning left, I'm not convinced that this is a widespread issue across nearly every Journey out there. It's been discussed in several forums here. One person mentioned that they had the power steering pump replaced, and it didn't remedy the situation. Another said that their dealership ended up replacing the entire exhaust system. I haven't heard whether or not that resolved the problem for good on his Journey yet. I had the dealership look at mine, and they reported it to be nothing abnormal at this point, as they found the same condition on a couple of the Journeys sitting on their lot with single digit mileage on them. I wrote to Chrysler about it, and received a standard form respone back about the concern being routed to the appropriate people. I highly doubt that you will see a recall for this noise, but I am willing to bet based on the widespread reports of it that a TSB (technical service bulletin) will be in the works....soon. At that point, Chrysler should have diagnosed the cause and have a remedy available for the dealership service techs to implement. Until then, I guess we'll have to put up with it.

Shouldn't be a problem. LEDs are solid state and work in a wide range of temperatures. I've done a similar bulb change out on my RAM (license plate, roof-mounted amber clearance lamps, CHMSL) and have had no issues at even -20°F (-29°C).

So, after test driving a couple of Journeys, I chose the premium convenience group. One of the upgrades in this group is the interior lighting is handled using white light emitting diodes (LEDs) which give a noticeably whiter light than the yellowish light typical of a standard incandescent bulb. Call me a nitpicker, but I thought it to be strange and a bit discongruent that the two bulbs in the liftgate were not also converted over to LEDs. To me, they now stuck out like a sore thumb. So, I decided to bring them inline with the rest of the interior lighting. After taking a measurement of the festoon style bulbs in the liftgate, I popped over to www.superbrightleds.com and searched for a replacement. I ended up getting some 39mm festoon replacements (3910-W6) in "cool white." While I managed to get these to work with little hassle, if I had to do it again, I'd make two minor changes. First, I'd go one length longer. While the 39mm bulbs fit, the 42 x 11mm would probably fit a little better. There's a lot of room for adjustment as the bulb sockets are just metal spring clips. Second, I'd reconsider "warm white" instead. While the warm white are meant to mimick the color temperature of an incandescent bulb, I noticed that the LEDs that were factory installed in the overhead seem to be a slight bit warmer (yellower) than the "cool white" that I purchased. The difference is minute and the cool whites are still a big improvement in appearance over the incandescents. Installation was fairly straightforward. Take a small flat blade screwdriver and pry off the cover in the two appropriate slots. Remove the incandescent bulbs, make any necessary adjustments to the spring clips and install the LED bulbs. The incandescent bulbs emit light in 360° whereas the LED bulbs are rather one-sided in their projection of light. To prevent rotation, I secured the bulbs with a small piece of transparent tape across the top of the bulbs and clips. Here's the result At the same time, I thought I'd add a little bit of "sleekness" to the back at the same time. I also ordered a couple 168 bulb replacements for the license plate. I chose the WLED-W5 in "cool white" in particular because of the way the LED elements are oriented. Unlike my RAM, which the top of the 168 bulb faces the license plate, the Journey uses the side of the 168 bulb to illuminate. As such, any 168 replacement that concentrated the light out what would normally be the top of the bulb would not work properly. The WLED-W5 has LED elements that shoot sideways for a wider illumination pattern, which includes the sides. Installation was again quite simple. Use the trusty slotted screwdriver to pop out the license plate lamp holders, twist out the lamp bases, remove the bulb, install the LED bulb in its place, then reassemble. This is the result: Yes, I don't have my personalized plates, yet. But when I do get them, they will be lit with a white light, instead of the yellowish glow of the incandescent 168 bulbs. I did not tackle any of the 3157 bulbs (turn signals, tail lights) intentionally. First of all, I haven't come across an LED replacement bulb that I felt adequately worked in a reflector type fixture which are now prevalent on most Dodge vehicles (versus the older style Fresnel lensed type fixtures). Most LED bulbs are not very omni-directional, which is a characteristic of the standard 3157 incandescent that these reflector type fixtures rely upon to make a larger surface area of projected light. Second, even if I had found a suitable LED replacement, it would likely require the installation of a ballast resistor across the wiring to the lamp base. This is necessary on the Journey or else you will get a "LAMP OUT" indication on your dashboard. LEDs draw a fraction of the current that an incandescent draws. The ECM monitors the current draw of the exterior lighting system. When it senses a lower than nominal current draw, it makes the assumption that a bulb is burned out and alerts the driver accordingly. So, for now these bulbs will remain incandescent. So there's a quick summary of my simple evening project.

Sounds like a loose/incorrectly assembled connector. Yours isn't affected by the recall, correct?

Did the math and that works out to about 27.6MPG. That's still really impressive if you're doing that well with the 3.5L I agree though, the shift point for 6th gear seems to be between 50-55mph (80-90kph). I like to stay above that speed at ~60mph (100kph), conditions permitting, so that the transmission isn't dropping down into 5th all the time.

Well, the dealership service did hear the noise and made note of it. They mentioned that they took out a new Journey with 5 miles on it and experienced the same problem. They are claiming at this point that it's normal. I guess cross your fingers that Chrysler comes up with a fix at some point and puts out a TSB for it.

If you have Sirius satellite radio, bring up channel 0 and the ESN (electronic serial number) should be displayed on the screen. It should be 12 digits in length. Write down this number, then you might want to contact Sirius (866) 635-4070 and ask them what you should do if it wasn't activated when you took delivery of the vehicle. They may end up telling you to call your dealership. If that's the case, you'll need to give the dealership the ESN so that they can activate your radio. The fun part is that during the activation process (which takes only a minute or two), your satellite radio needs to be on and tuned to channel 184, which should be the only channel that you can receive without a subscription. This isn't a problem if you're activating the service yourself, but if your dealership has to do it, then there's a little more coordination needed. You shouldn't have to take it in to get it activated, but again, the radio needs to be on when the activation signal is sent. If your dealer did activate your 12 month subscription, you should be receiving a letter in the mail with your ESN, online username and password for use on www.sirius.com as well as a channel guide. If you're still having problems, include the three letter code of your radio type in your next post. It is printed on the front of your radio, and should be something like REN, REU, etc.

Don't know about what you're suggesting, but I've heard that a notebook, somewhat larger than an eee pc sets nicely in the front passenger seat "flip-n-go" compartment and stays in place fairly well. What's your intended application? Does the back seat(s) make the most sense?

You must be taller than most people. :D Don't know if you have the rear seat entertainment package, but the flip-down screen for that really blocks a good chunk of the interior rearview.

Check the comments in this thread. It seems that a number of people are reporting a noise with left turns in particular.

Describes my condition nearly exactly as to when it occurs. Talked with the dealer about it today. He mentioned that there is a TSB out that addresses a "whine" between 1800-2400 RPM, most noticeable when starting out from a stop. The two possible remedies are reprogramming the PCM or replacing the power steering pump. However, the service advisor and I both came to the conclusion that this was not the condition that I'm experiencing. He said that it may take several months before a TSB is published about a common problem if it doesn't involve safety. I guess, keep your fingers crossed that Chrysler takes notice of this and hunts down the problem. Mine is going in for a look on Monday, but I suspect that the dealer garage will be unable to come up with anything definitive as to what is the cause.

Well, what I'm experiencing isn't really a squeak per se, but a cavitation, almost a grinding-like sound. I've felt and heard similar vibrations when operating hydraulic equipment that was low on hydraulic oil, that's why my initial suspicion what the power steering. But, given what you describe, it would point to the tension on the serpentine belt as a possible cause. Both the power steering pump and the A/C compressor are powered from the belt. The power steering pump develops more resistance at its pulley when turning, and the A/C compressor obviously has more resistance when it is engaged. The combination of the two could possibly lead to the serpentine belt to slip if it were under-tensioned or inadequately sized for the power transfer needed for the accessories it runs. I'm curious about the power steering lines kinking. I didn't think that these really moved at all while turning, nor found themselves in the way of moving suspension parts, but if they did, it would certainly correlate well with the noise I'm experiencing. One other experiment that I thought of on my way to work this morning was seeing if the noise was present with the ESP turned off. The idea being that perhaps the noise might be the ESP prematurely starting some braking on the left front wheel (the wheel on the inside of the turn, when turning left). I'll report my findings on that experiment, though I'd encourage others experiencing this noise to give it a shot as well and see if it remedies the problem.

If the on-board diagnostics reported the brake fluid level switch and it tripped again, then I put my bets on it being a loose or faulty connector leading up to that switch as the next possible cause. The light by itself can indicate a number of possible conditions of the brake system. It will illuminate if the parking brake is engaged, the brake fluid level is low, or if there's a problem with the anti-lock brake system. The only way to differentiate between which of these conditions may be the problem, aside from manually checking them out, is to have a diagnostic code reader spit out the reason why it's illuminated.

Interesting differences. I have a brand-new Craftsman (Chamberlain in Sears paint, basically) which I installed this winter. Most definitely a rolling code system, yet I didn't have to hit the learn button on the opener at all, basically I stopped at step 3 in the manual. Maybe I got lucky.

So you don't believe me, eh? Check page 294 in your manual: Automatic Operation - Two- and Three-Zone ATC The Two- and Three-Zone ATC systems automatically maintain the climate in the cabin of the vehicle. To accomplish this, the system gathers information from the climate controls, from a dual sun-sensor located in the top of the instrument panel, from an infrared sensor located between the sun visors, and from various sensors located thoughout the vehicle. Further down: The infrared sensor independently merasures the surface temperature of the driver and passengers.

Given those figures, you averaged 21.7 MPG. Not bad for averaging 73MPH. Don't worry, the Journey scored well in the rollover test. :-)

Mike, I did the same mistake when I went to program my Homelink. This is not required. Your garage door opener does not learn the Homelink unit installed in your Journey, rather the Homelink learns (clones) a transmitter for your garage door opener (or other Homelink devices). In other words, the Homelink transmitter in your Journey is programmed by listening momentarily to a transmitter it will ultimately mimick. What you will need is a transmitter for your garage door opener that is already programmed (and working) for your garage door opener. Next, you need to press and hold the Homelink button that you want to program. When the flashing pattern changes, hold the transmitter close by the Homelink control and press down the button on the transmitter for a second or two. Release both buttons and the Homelink should be programmed. I have found that I need to press the button on the Homelink for about half a second to get my garage door opener to respond, as opposed to the swift click I give the OEM transmitter. Not certain if this is a characteristic of the Homelink system or how I happened to teach the Homelink in my Journey. Note: If you look in the manual, there is a section about programming the Homelink. There is a sequence for clearing out the Homelink settings...something to the effect of holding down the two outside buttons for 20 seconds or something. You may want to consider clearing things out and starting fresh. The short of it is, you don't touch the garage door opener itself when programming the Homelink in your Journey.

As part of the USA PATRIOT act, all cars are now required to have a camera so the government can watch occupants that might be engage in nefarious activities. :-D Seriously though, it is a heat sensor, similar in nature to what you might find on one of those motion-activated yard lights. It is part of the temperature control system for the heating/air conditioning (only on models that have the thermostat control-like temperature settings, such as the dual/tri climate control). This sensor measure the temperature of the cabin, using infra red, to determine whether an increase or decrease in temperature/fan speed is necessary to maintain the cabin at the desired temperature setting. It works better than a simple electronic temperature probe because it is able to read the temperature over a much larger area of the cabin and derive an average temperature upon which it can adjust the settings appropriately. The U-connect microphone is indeed in the mirror.

That's not the case. The connectors on one side of the harness are designed to allow to unplug the wiring harness near the taillights, plug this harness into the supply side, then plug the lights back into the harness. The other side of the harness is a standard 4 pin trailer wiring harness. The 4 pin harness provides a left turn/brake, right turn/brake, running lights, and a ground connection, but has no provisions for electric brakes. A 7 blade connector adds a terminal for electric brake actuation, as well as back-up lights, and an unswitched 12V supply (if all seven terminals are actually connected). The relay modules in the harness exist because, like most Dodge vehicles these days, the vehicle brake and turn signal lamps are separate. Rear amber turn signals are clear indication of this, but the RAMs and Grand Caravans also have a separate bulb for the turn signal and brake indications, despite both of them having completely red lenses. The relays combine the brake light and turn signal indications for each side into one circuit, since non-commerical trailers are commonly wired with combined turn/brake lamps. Most older domestic cars and trucks were also setup with combined turn/stop indications. Only after the imports made headway in the U.S. market did it become en vogue to separate the turn and brake light indications, typically with the turn signals becoming amber in color. The brake module pigtail in the RAM is nothing more than four wires hanging out of a rectangular automotive connector that looks nothing like a trailer wiring connector. The brake module itself wasn't part of the RAM tow prep group because there were (are) a sufficient number of owners who plan to trailer, but won't need the electric brake control module. Most larger boat trailers use surge brakes, and smaller trailers have no brakes whatsoever. Given that it's not common to find electric brakes on trailers rated for less than 3,500lbs, if you're pulling a trailer with electric brakes with your Journey, then there's a reasonable chance that you're exceeding the towing capacity of the Journey.

Pardon my language, but that's bulls***. Any RAM that you order with the tow prep group comes with the 7 blade electrical and 4 pin trailer wiring connectors pre-installed at the factory. The only loose wire harness that you get is the 4 wire pigtail with a connector to which you can wire your choice of electronic brake module and then plug in underneath your dash, should you happen to trailer something with electric brakes. This was the case on both my RAMs. I, like most people was confronted with a mass of wires, connectors and relays laying in the rear compartment. If your dealership wouldn't install it for you at no additional charge, then either you're working with a non five-star dealer, or one that's looking to lose that certification. Tell them to put it in at no additional charge, or you're going to complain to Chrysler. The salescritter should have been wooing you about the customer satisfaction survey that you will be receiving in the mail, and how you "need" to contact him first if there's something that you can't mark "completely satisfied." Hold this over their heads, if necessary, and you should be able to get the results you want. I suspect that because this harness is not factory installed, but left hidden away in the jack compartment that the dealerships genuinely miss this when prepping the vehicle, since the other trailer tow preps usually come factory installed. I'm willing to bet in a year that this will be addressed, either at the factory or in the way the dealerships are instructed to prep vehicles.