2011 V-6 Durango. #2 cylinder misfire. My 36,000 mile warranty is expired by 2800 miles. Not a happy person right now, making payments and now I have to pay for repairs. Last Chrysler product I ever purchase. BTW this my 3rd Chrysler vehicle. The first one was a Dakota. 2 years old, 17,000 miles 4 rebuilt rear ends and one new one traded it in. Second was a R/T Charger Hemi, great car no issues sold it.
I currently have the SUV at the dealer. Secondary indications RPM dropped below 500 and temporary loss of power. I will update everyone.

 

This is an issue that would be covered under the powertrain warranty (5 years, 100k miles).

 

You are correct if it is an Internal Power Train issue and not a coil pack, spark plug or electrical issue, but the PCM is covered for 8 years or 80,000 miles. I have been an airplane mechanic for 16 years now, so working on cars is second nature to me. I troubleshot the gripe before bringing it to the dealer. I moved the #2 cylinder(left side) coil pack and spark plug to the #1 cylinder (right side),read out the harness and it checked good. I also put a couple of tanks of premium gas in it. I then reset the CEL and it popped again, That's when I decided to bring the SUV to the dealer.

Dealer just called me. They are replacing the head on the left side under the power train warranty. BTW this an issue with 2011-early 2012 V-6 Pentstar engines. I hope this can help out anyone that may have this issue.

 

From the stuff I've read, Dodge says only about one-half percent of V-6s (about 1,700 engines) are affected by this problem and the cure is to replace the left cylinder head.
What I don't understand is that if you have a miss normally you'd suspect a spark plug, spark plug wire, ignition coil, fuel injector or something mechanical (cam, timing belt, etc.) in the engine, but the solution (a new head) has no direct bearing on these symptoms.
So what is the problem with the head? No one ever provides an autopsy of the problem. I'm just curious; do the damned things crack, collect carbon in weird areas, melt, vaporize, turn to pudding . . . what happens?
If anyone can provide a more detailed explanation -- other than "replace the left head" -- I'd love to read it.
Thanks.

 

Orion, my guess is a design and/or manufacturing flaw that results in a stuck valve or lifter failure causing the missfire. But to my knowledge Chrysler has never officially said what the defect is.

 

Here is a blip from allpar on the subject.

The Pentastar engine has an unusual design. The engine's exhaust passages merge into a single outlet in the aluminum cylinder heads before exiting to the exhaust manifold. Most modern engine designs send hot exhaust gases in separate passages in the head to the exhaust manifold.

Bob Lee, Chrysler's chief of engineering, said, however, that excessive heat was not a factor in the malfunction and that his engineering teams spent months isolating its causes.

"This one was a challenge," Lee said. "The good news is that it's a very small percentage of the customers and it's something we've taken care of."

Betts, who as head of quality oversees a team of 1,200 people dedicated to improving Chrysler's once-woeful quality reputation, declined to identify the exact cause of the problem.

He said the malfunctions were the result of "an interaction of a lot of rare things that ultimately come together to affect a small percentage of the population." Those could include different fuel mixes and the way the vehicle is driven, he said, though he did not explain further.

Lee said there are limits to the percentage of Pentastars that will experience the malfunction because of the variables involved.

"You have to have this fuel characteristic, you have to have this drive cycle -- and all of these things have to line up in order to have this situation occur," Lee said. "That's why" the number of potentially affected engines "is so small. If it were a design defect, or if it affected [a basic component] like the integrated exhaust, we'd have issues on everything, which we don't."

They won't admit there was a machining flaw for obvious reasons but from what I gather there is a exhaust flow variation in cylinder #2s portion of the head. The design dumps all of the cylinders exhaust on each bank into the aluminum head like a collector then into the integrated exhaust manifold. Supposedly this pathway leading from #2 is incorrectly machined leaving too much material changing that cylinders exhaust volume. This would put backpressure on the exhaust valve generating heat. A lot of heat. This in turn would cause a burnt valve (distorted and therefore incorrectly sealing) which causes detonation which is where you get your misfire. There are hundreds of threads on multiple jeep sites addressing this issue and relevant since they are the same 3.6 engine as the Durango. No one really knows (outside of chrysler) other than the affected heads came from the Mexico plant.

 

Dealer just called me. They are replacing the head on the left side under the power train warranty. BTW this an issue with 2011-early 2012 V-6 Pentstar engines. I hope this can help out anyone that may have this issue.[/QUOTE]

THis is exactly what I had done to my 2012 v6. Have not had an issue since it was done, and would venture to say, it drives better than the day I picked it up. Glad to hear they are covering it.

 

Thanks. That makes things a lot clearer. I wonder how many men or robots they have doing the machine work, and how many heads can they process each day. Due to the small percentage of failures I'd suspect a intermittent error in one of the machining robots. Interesting problem. I'd love to see their report on the process of how they isolated the error,

 

The number of affected engines is over 7500 across all of the platforms. At one point they were getting 500 requests for head replacements a week. This problem should be getting smaller since Chrysler is catching up on the replacement heads. Lots of people out there with 11s and 12s with super low mileage that haven't developed any issues like my pops 12' wrangler with only 4k miles. Time will tell.

 

Just turned 30K with my 2012, so if its gonna happen I hope it is soon.
BTW, any idea how much it would cost to replace the head WITHOUT the warranty?