Sorry for this being long, but I wanted to have as much information in here as possible for someone to possibly help us out. Thanks.

I have a 2013 Durango R/T AWD 5.7L all stock with 2300 miles and we have had her for 5 week’s tomorrow.

I have posted before about the smoking problem we have while parked on our incline of a driveway (maybe 20%).

The day after we had bought the vehicle, it was towed into the dealer and worked on for a week with the end result of getting a new oil pan for the truck to stop the smoking issue, which it did not fix at all.

The Regional Tech from Chrysler was the one who said the new oil pan was 100% the fix so, I had asked for him to come to my home and see firsthand that it was not the fix. He came out a week later (due to the Fourth of July). He came out with a mechanic that has worked on a vehicle I traded in for this Durango so he knows I am not some kind of nut job. We stood out front talking for a few minutes with the truck doing no smoking…lol He said that there was a “flash” coming out in the next month or so that is going to bump the RPM’s up to about 1200 RPM’s and it will finally fix the smoking issues.

I asked the tech if he would like to see the videos I had recorded of all the smoking and no oil on dip sticks on two trucks etc.. He said sure. The entire time we were inside (about 15 minutes) the mechanic stayed outside with the truck running.

After the tech’s amazement of seeing what I had recorded of two different trucks smoking etc.. He had asked for a copy to send to corporate. I burned a disk and we went out to the mechanic saying “he needed to see this”.

The mechanic had started the truck and clear as day plumes of smoke come billowing out of the right tailpipe. It had not done just one tail pipe before but anyway, the tech jumped into the truck and held the gas petal at about 1200RPM’s. He then had the mechanic hold the petal for him while he stood next to me watching the truck continue to smoke. I looked at him after a couple minutes and said, “Guessing this flash is not worth the **** then”?....lol

He said, Well, I think what we are going to do is this. I will give you (my dealer) my employee pricing number to give you between $3-$5000 for an employee discount on a 2014 model when ordering opens and work with your dealer on getting you a great deal on trading your truck in. Or if you like since the flash should be out by the same time the new model rolls out, we can put the flash on and see if that works.

Of course I said we will go with the newer truck….DUH! Especially since I had seen firsthand that this new flash is not going to do anything but waste more gas while sitting idle.

So, I asked my dealer to let me know when the pricing comes out as I want to see what a few options might cost if we were to get them in the new tuck. That was about 2 weeks ago.

Tuesday the owner of the dealership called and said that he was talking with the tech, the tech said that he sent out the videos to corporate and they say that this new flash is going to fix the issues (I have heard this before). He also said that even though pricing and ordering is not available as of yet he does not think even with the employee pricing that they will be able to get the numbers where they need to be for us to get the newer model. But he will not make the final call until he gets to build, price and order the new one.

So, this is where I would like a little input from the pro’s here.
I do not feel that we need to get the shaft from the dealership on trading in a month old vehicle. They worked with me a little (I do mean a LITTLE) on pricing for this new truck we have since we traded in a 2010 Journey (total lemon) that they knew was a lemon in which they sold me three years ago new. I also feel that my wife and I do not need to have our credit reran again causing our scores and history to take another hit from the 10 places they run the credit through since we did all that just a few weeks ago.

How do we get the dealership, Chrysler or both to take the current truck and turn it into a demo vehicle like they do with their manager’s cars instead of trying to do a simple trade in? How do we get either of the two to work with our current loan company to just “switch out” the vehicles on the loan? We were given three months no payments which starts in September this year giving us more than enough time to do.

More importantly, how do we get on the ordering list? I had seen this morning in another thread some have been on an order list of some sort and one person even received a VIN number to track their order online this week.

Are we just getting the shaft from the start from the dealership, Corporate, or both?

I also have someone from Chrysler calling me week after week asking for a status update from me even after they call the dealer and get the same answers. I am tired of them calling me since it seems they are nothing more than glorified customer service and do nothing for me. They called the other day and I asked them what is Chrysler prepared to do to take care of me? I asked how they were going to keep me from going less than a half mile down the road from my Dodge dealer and trading in my new truck for a FORD if they were just planning on doing a simple trade if my current Durango like they did when buying this Durango with my lemon? They had NO answer for me.

We are tired of the BS, and would like to get into the new truck and be happy. Truthfully, if they would have said that the 2014 model would be out around August this year, and that it had a totally new redesign, we would have waited to purchase for sure since we were not in total need of getting in a new one.

I wanted to post the videos of everything here for you all to see, but it seems they are too large or will not upload for some reason.

Thank you any and all help on this.

 

I read one of your previous posts where you said the smoking problem goes away when you park your car one way in your driveway versus the other way when the problem happens every time....

Seriously, why don't you avoid all this stress RE buy-back, trading in a brand new car, etc. and just park it the way the smoking problem doesn't exist from now on? Simple fix. May seem like you "shouldn't have to do that with a brand new car" or something, but I would take the lesser of two evils in this case.

 

You're asking for a gift and you're not likely to be happy with what they are offering you. You have 2 courses of action in this order:

1) Allow them to fix it properly -- whatever it takes.
2) If they are unable to fix it after the appropriate amount of time, invoke your state's lemon law (which will essentially get you a new truck).

Otherwise you are simply trading in a vehicle, and yeah they might give you a pretty good deal, but you're not going to get a one for one swap.

You can't just demand a new vehicle just because you are not happy, that's not the way things work. And yes, the are going to run your credit regardless if it's a day or a month later. Work with the system and you'll be a lot happier and have a lot less stress.

 

Sounds like it will never be fixed since, if I understand his posts correctly, he parks it on a 20% grade, which is almost 12 degrees. And the smoking only happens if he parks it front end down, not front end up. Seems reasonable to me the engine wasn't designed to be turned off for long periods on such an incline. I don't know if SAE has standards for this type of thing, but I know in ship design there are requirements for equipment to be designed for minimum angles of incline. Of course, you have to expect a ship to be at 20-plus-degree inclines regularly.

Maybe in the Hemi's case, it was designed for 10 degrees and the OP is slightly exceeding that, causing the smoking.

 

This only happens with the front end up.

Since I prefer to park with the backside of my truck facing the garage for loading and unloading of items into my home. I have to back my boat into my driveway. I have to back my boat into a loading/ unloading ramp. All of which I cannot do unless I want to have smoke to go along with it. Which is NOT acceptable for a brand new vehicle valued over $40,000 and bought 38 days ago.

The Regional Tech is the one who offered to get me into the new model I never had the chance to ask. This led me to believe that I am correct in my thinking that this "flash" is not going to work. He said he tested the new engine and trans in the 2014 Cherokee which will be all the same for the R/T without all the current issues we are all having. He up-saled the newer model compared to mine right on the driveway so I really could not turn that down.

I know I can do the lemon law, but why should consumers have to do all that when problems arise right from the start? I did not have my truck a full 20 hours before it was towed off the driveway and sent to the shop for something at the time "NOBODY" knew of when in reality they did as we all now know. Chrysler has a special thing that when ever I bring in my vehicles for any type of servicing, the service department needs to call them first before they can do anything on my vehicle. So, they know the problem started less than 24 hours of purchasing this vehicle.

Do not get me wrong, so far the owner of the dealership has been nice and worked with us along with the regional tech. I just foresee them screwing us on the trade amount and or something else when it all comes down to the numbers.

I am the one paying the bill here, and I have not looked for anything for free like some people in life so often do. I just think that maybe they could do so much better for me than running my credit and giving me less than 40,000 I paid for this truck 38 days ago.

 

Like was noted above, the dealer will take every step needed to rectify the problem and if it means waiting on the TSB update, then they will do that. Sucks after 5 weeks you are dealing with this on a $40k truck.

Its like anything, Car, House, Computer etc etc. The all cant wait to sell it to you, but when sh%t breaks, its nothing but cat and mouse to get it resolved.

Good luck man!!!

 

In another thread the OP said: "For customers who park on more than a 15 degree incline the 5.7 motor will smoke really badly. ALL cars with this motor will do this." He also said the loaner he got with that engine did the same thing.

Can his car be lemon lawed if all examples of that car model or models with that engine exhibit the problem? To me, it's not that his car is a lemon, it's that the car wasn't designed to be parked on 15-degree inclines. Don't know if that's reasonable or not.

 

That is just it. I had it do it to two different vehicles both were 5.7L R/T's. Is there somewhere on the site I can upload .mp4 files? I would love for you all to see the smoking and also how there is NO oil on the dipstick when checked right after smoking.

To me this is a major design flaw and problem. It only started with the 2011 Cherokee and Durango motors. It has not been seen too often on the 300's. I am in the top 10% of people who are experiencing this continuing issue after having the oil pan changed and also due to the fact most people park on level surfaces or so says the Tech. The new oil pan fix by the way only came out in February of this year. So, waiting another 6 months to a year for them to maybe fix these issues is not feasible to me. Going after a lemon law just is not want I am trying to get into. I have done the lemon law before. While it was nice to make some money, you do not always end up with a new vehicle and sometimes people get nothing at all.

I am not trying to sound greedy. I just would like to have a vehicle by Dodge work like it is soposed to. I am 0-2 with Dodge and if I need to ping my credit & trade this new truck in to get another Dodge then I think I will go down the road to a Company that make's great vehicles.

I along with many others helped bail out Chrysler with our money, so why can they not extend the same kind of olive branch with their vehicles?

 

Time for some tough love...give them their 3 attempts to fix it. If they can't just go lemon law. Of course it's going to be a hassle, but that's life. At least you're not getting hosed on a trade-in.

 

The smoking is the oil that has accumulated in the Intake manifolds (catch can solves this).
Unless Dodges TSB includes a nice catch can all hemi's will do this.
As for nothing being on the stick if you are checking with nose up on 20 degree incline it wont show anything on the stick, all the oil is not in the resevoir in the pan.
I have seen this once on my D and am not worried about it.

STEVE