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Shotgun Chuck

Journey Member
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Posts posted by Shotgun Chuck

  1. 1 hour ago, 2late4u said:

    battery should have been sealed in a 2014 if you were able to pop it open as stated i would replace the battery with an up to date one, they can check good and still not start a vech.

    This battery was installed by the dealership some time before we bought the car and has a Mopar label, so we had no reason to be suspicious of it.  (Come to think of it, the original battery was probably fine and was replaced in an attempt to fix whatever is still going on here).

  2. 13 hours ago, Armando G said:

    I would first ask you, what have you done so far to try to fix the problem, if anything. I don't think this is just a DJ issue, I truly believe this is a 'newer' car type of issue. I've dealt with three cars now that had the same type of issue and with all three cars we have completely cleaned out the ground wire where attached (remove any corrosion, wire brush the paint at the connection, and added anti-oxidation gel/stuff), and the issues have gone away on all three cars. With all the systems on these newer cars, making sure the ground is securely connected to a clean metal surface is necessary. Adding an extra ground is just avoiding fixing the issue itself. And if I look really closely at the car on the video, it looks like they cleaned the original surface itself (see pic). That was probably the fix without having to take the extra step. Anyway, that's where I would start, then go to the fuse box and relays to see if there is some corrosion in those areas as well. Moisture will create that little bit of corrosion that will effect the electrical.

     

    image.png.8889e136bf4c61074d2e422611bb8a58.png

     

    Good point.  Have not seen any corrosion on the remote negative terminal but we will sand the paint off and apply anti-oxidation coating in its place.  Can you recommend a brand?

     

    We popped one of the battery caps and one cell out of three on that side was low on water; could that also contribute to this problem?

  3. Have a 2014 Journey with the 3.6L V6, all-wheel-drive and automatic transmission (were there ever any V6 manuals?) where occasionally, when you go to start it, it will click once and refuse to crank.  In more severe cases it will show a "key not detected" message.  Happens constantly in the winter if you don't start it every day, very rarely in the summer, however yesterday I had the flashers going for about 30-45 minutes (don't ask) with the engine off and that killed it again.  Multimeter says the battery is fine, and if you hook it up to a charger/another battery it fires right up.  According to my searching this is a common problem and can be anything from loose/bad cables to bad connections to insufficient grounding.  In one video on YouTube, one person fixes this problem by running a 4-gauge battery cable from the negative post to some bracket on the engine block and says that he's never had it "click" at him since, the problem being that he has an older 3.5L model.  I went out to look for anything on that end of my 3.6L block which could serve as an extra ground as in that video, but I can barely even see the block for all the hoses and wires in the way.  Does anyone know of some attachment point or bracket somewhere on the driver's side of the block which could be used to anchor a battery cable?

     

    Here is the video in question, assuming I'm allowed to post that:

     

     

    In terms of repair history, I can't describe it fully due to it being my mother's car rather than my own, but it has been in and out of the dealer multiple times.  Something to do with the airbox frequently comes loose, something in the drivetrain was broken but still sort of worked (seem to recall it was something to do with the front differential), front differential computer was mis-programmed and had to be reprogrammed, transmission was shifting goofy and had to be put back in learning mode (not FCA's fault - previous owners had different typical driving conditions and we strongly suspect they weren't the best drivers ever either), and I actually can't remember if it's been to the dealer for this before or not.

     

    You may notice that my join date is a long time ago; that was my first attempt to register and ask for help with this problem; eventually I gave up waiting for the admins to let me in/for my validation e-mail to get there (I honestly can't remember which it was but seem to recall thinking the site didn't like me trying to register with a Hotmail address) and decided to just run the car every day as a stopgap measure; it seemed to work when we remembered to do it and is usually not necessary in the summer.

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