JabberJaw

My wife and I both liked our Journey. 2009 SXT AWD. Nice ride,quiet and reasonable gas mileage. It had a couple minor problems but they were all addressed by the dealer. Then the transfer case started leaking and had to be replaced. Still not a bad problem. Next, at 21,000 miles, the transmission started shifting hard between 1st and 2nd. The dealer took it in on 11/29/10 and working with Dodge did several tests on the transmission and decided it need to be replaced. By this time the transmission was sitting on the floor beside the vehicle and the shipping date was 12/14 for the new transmission. The 14th came and went with no transmission. The dealer did recieve a message telling him it was back ordered but no shipping date. My Chryser Customer Care rep told me that if they were not manufacturing the transmissions at this time there was not much he could do about it! Last week I threated to go to the Attorney General's office of NYS. The dealer took it upon himself to make us a very nice deal on a Jeep Grand Cherokee. As of 12/23/10 the dealer owns the Journey and we own the Jeep. The service manager says it could be a month before they get a transmission. I have posted this only as a warning if you are having transmission trouble. A HARD SHIFTING transmission IS BETTER THAN NO transmission. Be sure they have transmissions available before you let them remove the old one.

I talked to the Service manager sometime ago while having my truck serviced. We decided to wait on trying to repair the Journey audio problem that reoccured after the radio was replaced. He called early this week and said he had an update that should fix it. He didn't say if it was hardware or software and has been off on a family emergency since he called. I will contact him next week and have the repairs made and then report back here what was done.

TireRack.com lists these tires for $169 plus shipping. Cost to ship UPS ground to New York State for 4 tires was about $73. Add another $30 per tire for mounting and balancing and they cost approxiamately $210. I've paid more for snow tires in the past. http://www.tirerack.com/

I haven't noticed odd shifting but I agree on the torque converter lockup. It will use any excuse it can to unlock. The slightest grade will do it. It does seem overly sensitive. An observation on the shifting. I have an 06 Ram 1500 with the 5 speed auto and Hemi. The transmission is programmed to shift exactly as described in an earlier post. Under light throttle you would swear someone was shifting a standard. The engine backs off while the shift is made. It's not nearly as noticable if you get onto it. They say it's done to take the torque off the transmission during the shift. I wonder if it may be the same thing in the Journey but it is more pronounced in certain transmissions? Either way we are quite happy with the Journey.

My daughter has a GMC Acadia. She installed the Locpic and is very happy with it's operation. She says it does everything they advertise it to do. I would assume the MyGig model should work as advertised also.

Interesting coincidence............. Our daughter lives in Texas and owns a GMC Acadia. The wife was talking to her tonight and mentioned the audio problem we have experienced with the Journey. She has the Nav system in the Acadia and has had the same problem about 4 times in the 8-10 months she has owned it. She says shutting the key off and restarting the vehicle restores the audio. On a side note she has added the LocPic to her unit and is very happy with the operation.

It is not the radio. Ours has been replaced for this problem already. Left on a 4 day camping trip Thursday night, no internet available at campsite. We lost audio when we left the driveway and got it back when we stopped about 75 miles later at a store just off the interstate. The pattern seems to be that you lose the audio when you start the car, not while it is running. Audio comes back when the car is shut off and restarted. Not sure how much time is needed or if you could shut it back off immediately and have the audio return. I have an appointment to have the Hemi Ram serviced on Wednesday and will talk to the service manager about it then

Nav Mygig Updates (Chrysler Journey-REU) No updates available This is from the site. http://mofv.com/mygig/ Am I looking in the wrong place?

I haven't found an update for MYGig with the Nav unit yet. If someone find one, please post it.

The new radio came in yesterday. Having it installed at 3:30 today.

Thanks for the link. Apparently this is not an isolated problem. I'll post back after the radio is installed.

We have experienced the complete loss of audio twice now. By complete I mean no audio from the nav, AM, FM, Sat, HDD, etc. When you push the audio adjust knob the display gives a message of "no audio to adjust". Both times the audio has returned after one or two times of shutting off the car and restarting. We have also experienced at the same time the navigation system being unable to plan a route. It starts to plan and goes to never-never land. It will still show your position but that is all it will do. We took it back to dealer this week and they have ordered a new radio. I will post again after it is installed if it seems to be the answer.

Got our Journey the last part of July. We saw our first one at the McDonalds in Oneonta, NY last weekend. It had Connecticut plates.

I hope your salesman is right but we ordered the 1st week of May and I got a call yesterday that it shipped on July 1st and will be at the dealer on July 15th. More like 10 weeks instead of 4 - 6.

Here is an interesting link. You can actually see how some of the features on MyGig work and what they look like. http://www.dodge.com/en/owners/mygig/