dodgeman324

Yeah this Pentastar has won me over. Now, I still miss my two HEMI's I traded in for our Journey, but for this size crossover and being almost a minivan, it really has a nice kick. Just earlier today on my way home from work, I took an on-ramp onto a highway I usually don't take because it's a very short merge lane, I'm talking maybe 100 feet before the side guardrail, and the road just before the on-ramp is 25mph and the highway is 65mph so in that short time you have to get up to speed quick or else hit the wall or hit another car. So, I punched it to the floor and quickly forgot about the torque-steer to the right so had to quickly grip steering wheel for dear life and look to see if my "slot" in the lane was clear. Awesome!!!

Yeah I have an 11 with Pentastar and love it. Best most torquey V6 I've every driven. I bought mine in Colorado, at an elevation of over 6000 ft, and it was quick there, scooted along the highways and city great. Then, we just recently moved to Oklahoma at maybe 300 ft above sea level, and wow, now it really screams (for a V6). Lets just say, mine is AWD, and I can bark the tires at stoplights/stopsigns, then traction control kicks in dropping torque, but if you turn off the traction control, it's fun. Not great for the tranny, but I occasionally like to have fun when my wife ain't riding along.

Yeah mine does that too, but never past 5mph. I live in Colorado and so we have lots of hills and small mountains on our drive between Denver and Colorado Springs, and yeah, if I do nothing, it will slow to 5mph under set speed and then downshifts and quite quickly gets back up to speed, no matter the hill angle. But, as I've driven and figured it out, I always just give it a head start when I see the hill coming up and just press the gas at the right time to get the momentum up before the hill and I don't lose speed that way. So, whether you downshift the autostick, or use my method, you can keep the speed at the set number somewhat easily. But yeah, it's definitely a programming for the tranny to save it and save gas mileage. I miss the little option I had on my 2004 Dodge Ram Hemi, when I cut a single cord going into the ECM that turns off the transmission's torque controller (programming), which allowed my automatic Hemi truck to bark its tires shifting into 2nd and 3rd gears, it was sweet. Didn't want to think of the damage being done inside that tranny though, lol.

Yeah, I wasn't going to wait on Chrysler to get that correct harness out, so I went ahead and bought a Modulite kit and it works fine. The modulite kits get their power directly from the battery so no worry on low voltage from LED taillamps. I only had to run a wire to the battery remote terminals, everything else splices into the tail lights and only gets the actual turn or stop signals, not power. If you can wait until late September, then that's cool, but question is, how much are they gonna want for that thing? My modulite was only $35 with free shipping, oh and get this, they accidently sent me two for the price of one. Hehe. Anyways, best of luck getting trailer wiring.

No problem on the pictures. I took my bumper off which made it much easier to install, but it wasn't required, just fyi. If you go with the Mopar Hitch, you will have to take bumper off and cut into the bumper. I didn't wanna do that.

I also installed mine today. My Draw-Tite model came by Fedex this morning, and this afternoon at about 2pm I started the install. Most of my time was getting exhaust hangers undone. I just had shoulder surgery last week so my actual grip strength is decreased which made getting them off more difficult and time consuming, but the WD40 is a definite must when working with those things. As said by several other members, the actual hitch install was pretty easy. My kit came with included wire with perfectly sized threads at end for the carriage bolts for feeding bolt through impact bar, I was impressed that they include those these days. I was expecting to use my own wire methods to prevent bolt loss inside framerails. I went with the Draw-Tite because 1) I didn't want to cut bumper and 2) I already have a ball and ball shank for normal horizontal receiver, therefore, not needing to purchase a vertical receiver shank (is that what it's called). Because of my shoulder, I used a floor jack to lift hitch into position while I threaded on nuts and washers. Putting the exhaust back up went much better than taking off, somehow. Well, here's the pictures of my finished product. Now, I'm just waiting on a Modulite kit in the mail to hopefully get a trailer wiring hookup going. More to follow on that.

Hello everyone. So I ordered a trailer hitch receiver and will get that in the mail soon, but I'm still trying to figure out how I'll do wiring. I've read all the previous posts several times and haven't read anything on exactly how yall did your trailer wiring. So, my question is, what part did you order or your dealer order to provide a 4pin plug for trailer lights? I've talked to my dealer's parts departments, and they can find info on the part number but they all say mopar hasn't produced the part yet, so it can't even be ordered. My Journey did not have the trailer prep package or trailer tow package so I have no 4 pin wire anywhere. I've looked under there and yeah, nothing. So, since this part is not available yet, how do I go about getting a 4 pin wire harness for trailer lights? I've seen or heard of these kits that have a black box, and you tap into the brake lights and turn signal lights, and run a wire to the battery to supply power, but then I keep hearing about our LED lights not pushing enough power, so I'm confused. So, any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm moving in a few weeks and need to tow a uhual trailer, so I need to figure out how to get trailer lights working as soon as possible. Please help. Thanks.

I'm right there with you. I just picked mine back up from the stealership just now to have 5 things fixed, and as far as I know, none were fixed, either because they couldn't replicate the problem, or just don't know how. I'm also having an air problem. It "resets" itself sometimes. But anyways, of course, since it only does it occasionally, it sure ain't going to do it when the technicians have it. Just my luck. So, they flashed it with some little tsb's and said that will fix it. We will see.......

I can agree with Mango. These new 2011's are a whole new class from the old Journey's. The Pentastar is amazingly peppy, the interior is beautiful and very ergonomic even for my 6ft 4in body, it is very quiet, rides great, is spacious (again, I'm able to sit in second row comfortably, not third row tho unless I get whole third row to myself and sit sideways, lol), and so much more I love about our 2011. Wish I coulda afforded the upper model with 8.4N radio, but even still, this 4.3 is working great. So, just because of one bad experience, and especially basing your whole Chrysler/Dodge/Ram/Fiat experience on a bad stealership experience, shouldn't turn you away from the whole line. For me, I hate Ford and will never buy one, but that's not based on one bad experience, its based on a multitude of mechanical problems I had with several Ford vehicles, I was repairing things left and right spending tons of money, therefore, lost faith in Ford. My first Dodge I bought, a 1994 Dodge Ram with the 5.2L, won me with big fireworks and flags, and every Dodge I've bought since has been nothing but great things with no issues. Anyways, I've heard about all the problems with the 09's and 10's, but seriously, the new 2011 is awesome and they should be recovering quite well from the previous years, with all their vehicles.

BAC, is this on a 2011? Mine is having one small issue sometimes. Right now we are having pretty warm weather so our A/C is always set at a certain level, blowing out the upper vents, at level 3 usually, and so on. Well, sometimes, I'd say maybe once a week, after shutting car off to run in a store, we'll come back out, start the Journey, and it's like the climate controls went back to a default. Default meaning air temp is right in the middle, floor vents blow, and entire climate system is off first off. So, we would have to put everything back to where we like it. It's quite weird.

I don't know if I have the Alpine System, but I have the 4.3 Uconnect and I have the same issue, these speakers just can't handle bass, period. Listening to radio and Sirius, I could turn the bass up without too many issues, but once I plugged my iPod in for music, I had to turn bass back to neutral to stop the terrible distortion. So, I definitely need to replace these speakers with higher quality ones, such as the ones mentioned by moondwagon above. How much did those run ya btw?

Got mine installed the other day, but being that we don't do a whole lot of driving at night, I still haven't taken the Journey out on the road at night so I don't even know how good the HID's look yet, but I know they are working from right after I installed them. I went with 6000K, wired using the capacitor and relay, and got it all grounded. Can't wait to drive at night.

Can anyone convert all those numbers above to american style "MPG", haha. I guess a lot of people have Journey's in Canada, and the majority of them are on this board, lol. Anyways, mine is averaging 19 and that is mostly city. On top of that, here in Colorado, almost every gas station puts the 10% ethanol in their fuel (which I hate) and that drops my MPG by about 4-5mpg. And then you have to figure in the high elevation as well which is hurting gas mileage also. I can't wait to get back to my home state of Oklahoma because I estimate I'd be averaging close to 26mpg city.

Yeah I did the same thing. I was going to install my son's headrest dvd player and yank, pulled out two wires upon removing headrest, to later see an airbag warning light at all times near speedometer. I am going to try and figure out how to get inside the seatback as well to possibly complete the circuit to those wires to make the airbag warning light disappear. I know I know, bad juju but hey, when you have a 4 year old hyperactive son, you can't go without backseat entertainment.

I have seen only a select few older model Journey owners around my city, and according to my dealership, the only 5 star in the city, I was the first to buy a 2011 from them. There is only one other Dodge dealership btw. So, could I possibly have the only 2011 in a city of 550,000................ah well, probably not, but hey, like to think it.

Congrats on the R/T. I'm also another fellow Okie with a 2011, Mainstreet, not R/T. I grew up in Oklahoma and joined the Army in 2005 so I move around a lot, currently in Colorado, but getting out in the next months so possibly moving back home, depending on job opportunities.

I think your answer from them really does fall down to one or both of two things, they don't really know the system's schematics yet, and/or don't know how to disassemble the dash or body parts. I posted a thread a few days ago about my service department visit asking them about dash trim removal and such, and they looked and looked, and asked peers and service managers, and just don't have the info on how to remove the dash yet, and didn't even know if there is a "hole" behind our 2011 radio units location to put in an aftermarket radio. One guy I talked to believes that the 8.4 or 4.3 unit that is in our dash, is just an lcd touchscreen, only about 2-3 inches deep and there isn't any hole behind it, and the actual radio unit is an all-in-one module tucked way down into the dash and a cable is connected to that lcd screen. So, I think us 2011 owners are SOL for a couple months until more information is put out regarding aftermarket parts (radio's, amps, subs, etc). But hey, if anyone reading this does indeed find a way to get behind the dash trim, please share for all of us. I've kinda tried but didn't wanna tug too hard on things as to break them, I already did enough of that installing my son's headrest DVD player behind my seat.

Hello, first of all, I'm new to this group, so Hello to you all. I bought a 2011 Journey Mainstreet a couple weeks ago and so far we love it. Anyways, I'm a car audio/video buff and love installing radios and video equipment, and I have a DVD/GPS in-dash unit that I hope to install into my Journey (mostly just for the GPS part), however, after trying to figure out how to remove my dash panels with no luck, I went to my local dealership's service department to ask if they had any write-ups, diagrams, or any information on how to remove the trim. Well, they looked and looked in their computers, no luck, they walked around talking to all the tech's, no luck, and lastly found one picture with some info in their computer software. It said that the "radio" we see in our dash (mine's the 4.3inch touchscreen), is really just a small lcd screen with buttons on side, and the actual radio unit is tucked down further into the dash, and not right behind the touchscreen, and they don't believe there is a hole to put an aftermarket radio there. So, I'm a little upset, because I should have the right to install an aftermarket radio if I choose. Anyways, figured I'd pass the info along. I guess if there indeed isn't a hole to put an aftermarket radio in, then I'll just have to purchase one of them cheap window GPS units for our Navigational needs. Have a good one yall.