an excellent website to help with our wheel, tire and sensor problems!

http://www.tirerack.com/index_w.jsp

 

OK. I checked the book, and it has a lot of info, but no wheel offset info. If you have a wheel to look at, the offset should be stamped into the metal of the wheel. It will look like this: ET40. ET is the offset.

p.s. Be carefull with undersize wheels. I tried to put 16" rims on my Ram 1500. They would not fit over the front brakes.

 

I recently purchased new 16" steel rims for my 2008 Grand Caravan which originally came with factory 17" alloy wheels. I purchased Schraeder/Bridgeport # 20066 TPMS sensors which I was told was the correct match for Dodge #68001698AA or AB.
These sensors do not work and will not work because they are not 433 Mhz. The cross reference is wrong.
I purchased VOD/Siemans #1043 Dodge original equipment number 68001698AB installed them on my vehicle and within 10 minutes of driving through city traffic my light was off.
It took me 2 weeks of visiting tire shops and Dodge dealers but the problem is now fixed. The retail in Canada from Dodge for the sensor is
$71.80. I was quoted $81.00 at a jobber level from an aftermarket distributor.
Hope this helps everyone else.

 

2009 caravan
Registered User
Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 3



Hello, I have a 2009 Dodge Grand Caravan 25Th anniversary edition SE with 17 Alloy wheels, and I purchased 3 used factory alloy wheels off of a 2008 SXT Van. Two of the wheels had the factory TPMS and the third was damaged. I purched one new and one used tpms off ebay. I had Good Year ultra grip ice tires installed on the used wheels and I installed them on my van last week. The tpms light never came on and everything is working fine. The sensors are 433 mhz.

 

Can the tpms be disconnected?

 

Stopped by the tire shop to get the tires rotated on the 2008 Caravan. We were told by the tech that the tires had started "shredding" and this was not uncommon on this model. It was recommended that we purchase a certain model of Michelin tire that was really the only one that stood up well on the Caravan with the bad brakes. I've looked and looked, but haven't found one other mention of this anywhere. Has anyone else hear of this?

Not only is the price for these tires over $800, but they just happen to be going on sale tomorrow. Seems just a little convenient.

Please let me know if anyone else has heard of such a thing.

 

Oh my, it sounds like you've been taken for a ride more than once.

First of all, the 2008 Caravan does not have "bad brakes". They are, by far, the best brakes ever offered since the GC was released in the 80's. What it has is some rust-prone floating caliper hardware that may stick/jamb and cause the brakes to prematurely wear out or fail unless proper service procedure is followed. If your mechanic throws a set of pads on your van in 1/2 hr without bothering to fully disassemble, clean rust and fails to regrease the sliding pins and/or he reuses the old pad slider springs, the brakes are destined to prematurely fail AGAIN, but even quicker. Frankly, the common practice in the brake replacement industry is to skip these steps to maximize profit. Some brake designs tolerate this sin to some degree, but '08 and up Caravan doesn't. Installing pads and/or rotors without servicing the floating caliper hardware or replacing sliding pins and springs can double or triple their profit margin.

To give you an idea, a set of pads for the front or rear sells for low as $20 and replacing them without servicing the floating caliper and spring parts takes about 30 minutes. A spring kit for front or rear costs about $15, so mechanics generally reuse th e old rusted hardware and don't bother removign the springs to clean out packed rust under them. Even if they change springs, any rust is probably not removed from the caliper bracket because this takes an extra 10 minutes, so the clearances get too tight and the pads don't release properly. When the pads jamb from rust, the brakes are on all the time to some degree which leads to bad gas mileage and worn out brakes every 10K mi instead of every 25K mi. As for the floating caliper hardware, this is a separate hardware kit that costs about $15 per wheel. Yes, that's right....they cost more than pads. Very few mechanics replace these parts because it adds about an hour to to the brake job. The customer will never know and the van will soon return for another profitable brake job. To clean rust, regrease and reinstall the used floating caliper hardware takes even more time, so that step is skipped. It's a self-serving utopia for the typical lazy mechanic who is more interested in making money than properly fixing vehicles.

Now on to the tires.....

Tire selection has absolutely nothing to do with brakes. Anyone who told you that was trying to pawn off old stock tires or higher profit (overpriced) tires to a total sucker. If the tires are chunking, they need inspected by a dealer or good alignment shop and may need replaced. I would take the vehicle to a certified Michelin dealer and have them contact Michelin. I would be suspicious of the date code, as they may be very old tires. If this is not the case, then the vehicle may have some sort of alignment or suspension wear issue. Unfortunately you didn't mention the mileage on these tires, model or year when they were purchased. I can't see the tires, so I can't easily guess with no additional info. The term shredding is not used by tire experts. I don't know what this means to you. Is it possible the tire is being rubbed by something or saw some hard curb rub? Chunking is caused by excessive heat buildup caused by high speeds, high G's and sometimes failing rubber due to age or sustained high speed use.

Yuo might want to stick with brake service at a Dodge dealer. Hopefully they have mechanics that care about the customer and better understand what shortcuts can and can't be taken on a 2008 Caravan.

 

Our '08 T&C 16" wheels van had new rear calipers/rotors/pads at less than 30K miles due to a stuck caliper. Apparently there is a redesign and/or TSB now for that? The dealer did the brake job, but it was so long ago, we more than likely got "same as new" parts. Now the rears are whistling again and the van is at about 58K miles. Coincidence, or the original rears last about 30K miles with mostly highway driving and very gentle use?

Our '99 Grand Caravan had no brake issues at all, just normal wear, and we got almost 220K miles from new on the van before selling it, and that van had puny 14" wheels. Probably two or three news sets of rotors/pads at the front, one service at the rear. Chrysler can get it right. The older vans were somewhat lighter though, but by what, only 15% or so? The 3rd gen 4 speed transmission had far superior shift programming too. I definitely have the impression that Chrysler underfunded the 5th gen development at launch, then fixed it later. I partly blame myself for buying a 1st model year van. Risky!

Our '08 T&C van front brake rotors/pads were replaced for $100 in some kind of customer satisfaction / goodwill campaign. Why did Chrysler do that if the brakes were ok? I haven't had to redo the front brakes so maybe they made a running change and fixed those? Regardless, I will be looking at good quality aftermarket parts when they need doing again.

 

In my opinion, 30K mi between brake jobs on a minivan is totally normal, if you're running heavy duty semi metallics on the front. If you choose ceramics for the front, better reduce that estimate to about 15K-20K mi. I have been replacing brakes on my cars for the last 35 years and I've even changed out & modified systems and upgraded to larger brakes. On one car, I added ABS. I'm a high performance drivers ed instructor.

Some nose-heavy V8 vehicles with rear drum brakes will see 50K mi or so between rear brake jobs, but their front brakes are generally overworked, needing changed every 20K mi. The Grand Caravan has more weight in the rear and the rotors are solid, so they are getting a workout. The fronts have been wisely uprated to 12" which is about the largest system that will fit inside a 16" wheel.

The folks I feel sorry for are getting 8-15K mi between brake jobs. I think those folks have mechanics taking shortcuts by failing to properly service the floating caliper systems, springs and removing any packout rust behind the pad springs during EACH brake job. They are also probably too lazy to use a torque wrench on the rears. I thought the TSB on the rear brakes was for 2011 vans that had some brake clearance issue.

I run Autozone Duralast lifetime pads on my 2001 GC with standard brake setup (front disc, rear drums). Their $50 lifetime ceramics last 12-15K mi, but their $30 lifetime semimetallics last double that (25K mi). I downgraded to the semimetallics after have no luck with the ceramics. The other problem with the ceramics is they required more pedal pressure to stop and they tended to fade under hard use. This is my experience with verious ceramics on all cars. They are simply not for severe duty use.

I wholeheartedly agree with your shift programming comment. The 6spd upshifts very late into 2nd and 3rd under medium to light throttle which is quite unnecessary and surely wastes fuel. The tranny might as well have wider 4spd ratios with an earlier shift. I believe the downshift from 6th to 5th on hills is actually a downshift from 6th to 4th followed by an upshift to 5th. After a while you forget about it lol. The 3.8 has good torque, so downshifts on hills are fairly rare unless you see highway inclines steeper than 10% in the mountains. These design and functionality compromises are an outcome from grafting two more gears to the old 4spd. It's probably why they are going to use a 6spd tranny sourced from another mfr next year. Interestingly, I notice some application guides showing that a Getrag 6spd was used in some GC's, but I'm guessing it was limited to europe. I wouldn't want to get one of those rebuilt.