Hey all,
inherited an old Durango. Ran good for a while. Now, these are the issues at hand.
D puts me in second.
No OD.
2-3 shift good.
Unless I’m moving to first FROM park I will not get 1st. When stopped at a light and manual shift to first, nothing. Shift to park, then to first BINGO. Then to second & third manually.

O_o
Im a mechanic as much as I need to be.
Id REALLY appreciate any advice. Read all the other threads, understand course of action is dropping pan etc but anyone experience this SPECIFIC thing before?

 

Getting any codes? That would be the first thing I checked. It sounds like limp mode to me..... need to find out why the PCM thinks it should be there.

 

HeyYou, not scanned yet, will asap.
In the meantime, for the purpose of context, it is a 3 on the tree operation currently. Absolutely zero automatic up or down shifting. No dropping gear while giving it a lot of gas. Will scan today or tomorrow.

 

Wonder if the trans is even getting power...... I *think* it should still downshift though, if you step on the gas hard enough..... Not 100% sure on that though.

 

Got codes;
(non-causal)
P0443-Evan purge sol.
(causal)
P0743-Torque conv. clutch sol./trans relay circs
P0753-Trans 3-4 shift sol/Trans relay circs
P1740-TCC or O/D sol perf
P1765-Trans 12V supply relay CTRL circ.

Read at an Auto Zone. They recommended the 52118652 pt# governor pressure sol., gaskets, etc.

 

Also, no downshift under heavy foot. Manual downshift only.

My ritual is this;
Get in, start, reverse, down to first, up through to drive, once in drive it will manually shift down to 2nd, but not to 1st. No indication that it tries.
Stop at a light, park, wait, down to first will be successful MOST of the time, not if I don’t let it sit in park for a second.

Otherwise it’s in second and changing gear selection up to second yields no change, as it’s already in second. 0_o

Yesterday for the first time in a long time it attempted O/D and held it for a second before dropping it to third while in drive. Nothing changed ritually.
Occasionally hard shifts when going to first or reverse, but seldom.
Has tendency to die at the light or in gear under idle once warm, problem progresses longer I drive.

I know this is a lot but you can’t drive it and that’s the first thing anyone would do. None of this is ‘it feels like’. Other than the issues it runs pretty smooth and when tranny worked it was breezy. Onset was one occurrence, gap of a week, then continuous.

 

P1765-Trans 12V supply relay CTRL circ.

Fix that one first. I bet the rest go away.

 

So I did the fix described here ( ). Basically re-grounding to the body somewhere. I’ve seen this described on this forum and other places. Worked like a charm. I don’t take things at face value though, I wanna know why this works if anyone can explain like I’m 5 but really smart for 5.

Onto the next issue to resolve. I’ve been working on my drivers side headlamp; blows fuse with bulb inserted, doesn’t blow fuse if pulled out.
In dash the brights indicator is stuck on and only getting brights from pass side.
Read voltage from socket and getting 10.81~, from each outside pin on socket.
Checked wiring from headlight up to halfway to fuse box since I didn’t see any issues with the loom any further than that. Wiring is two striped reds, one white & one orange stripe, and one purp with white stripe. Reds come from fuse box, purple from passenger side as the loom goes across front under radiator.
Any guesses?

P.S: thanks

 

The trans gets power from a relay in the PDC, the relay is controlled by the pcm grounding it's control circuit. Dodge did it that way so that if you are just sitting there with the ignition on, you aren't constantly sending power to the trans, and running down the battery. Apparently, your PCM has some issues grounding that particular circuit, so, bypassing the PCM completely, so, when the ignition is on, the trans gets power, solves that issue. Cheaper than replacing the PCM too.