Greetings! I'm a shade tree mechanic - I can do stuff like minor engine work, suspension, brakes, that kind of thing - but by no means an expert.
I have a 2019 Dodge Grand Caravan GT with 99,XXX on the clock and a bit of a mystery that I could use some help solving.
So here's our sequence of events:
- Day 1: passenger side turn signal doubles in speed. Message appears on dash that the bulb is out and needs to be replaced. Checked again once reaching home and the problem has corrected itself. Visually confirmed that all bulbs are intact and working correctly. (This might be unrelated, but it's the first thing that indicated to me that there might be electrical gremlins).
- Day 2: The Grand Caravan loses the ability to go into park. The lever goes into park fine, but the vehicle rolls like it's in neutral. Every other gear works normally and there are no unusual noises. I chock it and call my mechanic.
- Day 5 or so: Mechanic calls and diagnoses the vehicle as having a broken parking pawl. Also notes that it is slipping while going into reverse. This is a new issue; previously, it had gone into reverse just fine. Suggests new transmission at $6400.
- Day 6: I despair
- Day 7 (today): I pick up the car from the mechanic. It is now having the opposite problem that it had before; it IS going into park just fine (indicating to me that the diagnosis was incorrect and the parking pawl is not, in fact, broken) but it is now slipping in reverse. It does move in reverse, but the engine revs high and the movement is very slow.
- Before it went to the mechanic, it showed absolutely no issues at all with going into reverse.
- It is not throwing any codes.
- There is no unusual noise from the transmission at all.
Up to this point, the transmission had functioned completely normally. Shifting was smooth and consistent, it moved quickly and almost noiselessly between park/drive/reverse/etc, and the vehicle has no other meaningful problems (it is throwing a code for a busted thermostat, but that's a pretty simple fix).
I did unhook the battery for about 20 minutes and then hook it up again to see if it would change anything. It didn't.
Is the transmission actually gone, or is there something much weirder going on here? Because I'm suspecting the latter.