2012 Journey Died in Flight

[tflite1]

New to forum. I have a 2012 Journey w/2.4L. Last Saturday my wife and I were on our way from Mesa, AZ to Colorado Springs, CO when it died going down the interstate. After stopping, it started right up again and went another 70 miles then died again. This is 5:30 PM on a Saturday so Chrysler Customer Service wasn't much help. We eventually made it to Colo Springs. The further we went the more often it died and took a little longer to restart sometimes. It was towed to Dodge dealer on Monday and Tuesday morning I got a call from the service advisor saying they had looked at the veh and performed some kind of PCM flash update, drove the vehicle and pronounced it fixed. Has anyone had a similar failure? What fixed it? I find it hard to believe that a software problem could cause it to just quit running. The check engine light was on the whole way after the initial failure. She said it was a crankshaft position sensor code, but was generated falsely. I have to go back in a week and a half and bring it back and I have absolutely no faith that it will get me home. Sorry for the long winded post.

[2late4u]

my daughter has a 2007 3.3 minn-van that she uses for a mail route and her check engine light is on and saying same thing about crankshaft postion senser also and it will go weeks with no problem and then act up and she will stop and turn it off then back on and sometimes she has to do this a couple of times in one day then it wont happen again for a while, she doesnt want to put it in the shop as they always tell you if it isnt doing it while they can see it then they cant do nothing,of course hers has about 74k on the engine, told her she should check to see if her 7yr 100k warrenty powertrain warrenty would cover this but she wants to act like its no big deal,,, Kids... oh well hope they gets your fixed okay, let us know how it turns out

[tflite1]

My son-in-law just emailed me a pic of the invoice and it says they found code P0339(s). I'll look it up at work tomorrow. The irony is that I work at a Dodge dealership. I'm the mechanic in the body shop, but I haven't done any driveability type work for about 15 years so I'm out of the loop. I'll take the info to the driveability techs and get their opinion and report back here.

[DodgeCares]

Below is the description of the P0339 code for the Journey.

P0339-CRANKSHAFT POSITION SENSOR INTERMITTENT

Theory of Operation

The Crankshaft Position (CKP) Sensor circuits consist of a Powertrain Control Module (PCM) supplied 5–Volt reference circuit, low reference circuit and an output signal circuit. The CKP Sensor is an internally magnetic biased digital output integrated circuit sensing device. The sensor detects magnetic flux changes between the peaks and valleys of a tone wheel on the crankshaft. Each tooth on the tone wheel is spaced with missing teeth for the reference gap. The CKP Sensor produces an ON/OFF DC voltage of varying frequency, reference output pulses per crankshaft revolution. The frequency of the CKP Sensor output depends on the velocity of the crankshaft. The CKP Sensor sends a digital signal, which represents an image of the crankshaft tone wheel, to the PCM as each tooth on the wheel rotates past the CKP Sensor. The PCM uses each CKP signal pulse to determine crankshaft speed and decodes the crankshaft tone wheel reference gap to identify crankshaft position. This information is then used to sequence the ignition timing and fuel injection events for the engine. The PCM also uses CKP Sensor output information to determine the crankshaft relative position to the camshaft, to detect cylinder misfire and to control the CMP actuator if equipped.

• When Monitored:

  While cranking the engine and with the engine running.

• Set Condition:

  When the CKP Sensor failure counter reaches 20. One Trip Fault. Three good trips to turn off the MIL.

Possible Causes

5-VOLT SUPPLY CIRCUIT SHORTED TO VOLTAGE

5-VOLT SUPPLY CIRCUIT SHORTED TO GROUND

5-VOLT SUPPLY CIRCUIT SHORTED TO THE CKP SENSOR GROUND CIRCUIT

5-VOLT SUPPLY CIRCUIT OPEN/HIGH RESISTANCE

CKP SIGNAL CIRCUIT SHORTED TO VOLTAGE

CKP SIGNAL CIRCUIT SHORTED TO GROUND

CKP SIGNAL CIRCUIT SHORTED TO THE

CKP SENSOR GROUND CIRCUIT

CKP SIGNAL CIRCUIT OPEN/HIGH RESISTANCE

CKP SENSOR GROUND CIRCUIT OPEN/HIGH RESISTANCE

CRANKSHAFT POSITION SENSOR

POWERTRAIN CONTROL MODULE (PCM)

Edited February 28, 2013 by DodgeCares

[tflite1]

DIED IN FLIGHT UPDATE. Since last post I have talked to 2 top driveability techs at our dealership and we called the Star Center and talked to a tech there who talked to one of the engineers. The two techs I know personally both told me they had never heard of a flash update for my concern. The Star Center tech said the same thing and told us the car was not fixed. They all said it would probably die again. They were right. It sputtered, but did not die 3 times near Albuquerque then did the same thing just south of Flagstaff. Then as I was coming down a 6% twisting mountain road near Black Canyon City, AZ it died with no warning. It restarted without trouble just like 2 weeks ago. It continued to die with no warning more and more often the last 100 miles home. At least we didn't get killed when it died in freeway traffic. We were finally forced to take side streets home for safety's sake. Needless to say, it is going to the shop tomorrow morning. This thing is unsafe to drive. My question to them will be: Who is going to drive this death trap 300-800 miles to make sure it is fixed? More later. Sorry for the long winded post.

[tflite1]

Update on dies in flight. Techs where I work found same DTC for crank sensor. Inspected wiring, performed wiggle test and replaced crank sensor. I drove the car another month and sold it. I did inform new owners the crank sensor had been replace for dying problem. They were ok with that. Just took delivery of a new Subaru XV Crosstrek. The Journey was too big for just the 2 of us and we had been talking about selling it anyway. Thanks for letting me vent, but I guess I'll have to move over to a Subaru forum.

[bramfrank]

I would hope you make a visit to the NHTSA web site (www.safercar.gov) and file a report with them - vehicles that die without warning on steep downhill grades are dangerous and since it appears that this problem is not unique, it should probably be investigated.