In February we bought a 97 Grand Caravan SE with a 3.3L has all the works front and rear heat and a/c, all power except the seats. It has 69k miles on it. The van starts easy and rides really nice. Everything works fine except sometimes when the windshield wipers are on they act funny. They wipe when they shouldn't sometimes. Thats not a real concern though. Sometimes the headlights stay on when you turn them off and you have to turn the dial back on then off again for them to go off.
Our real concern though is the van shutting off for no apparent reason and the transmission(I think).
Sometimes when going along the van will just shut off for no apparent reason. A few times it has acted like it was going to cut off the tach would go to 2-300 rpm and check engine light would come on but it would continue to run after a couple of seconds it will go back to normal. Now this can happen at any speed or standing still. It has happened at 70mph down to 2mph pulling into parking lot and happens idleing in park.
The other problem is sometimes going at little higher speeds, 35 and up the van feels sort of like it goes into neutral and pops back into gear hard and it happens really fast. I have noticed the check engine light come on and the speedometer drops really fast and picks back up when it seems like it goes back into gear. Now Im not sure if the van is cutting off for a split second or if its the transmission or if these two problems are related or what. The check engine light does come on for a few seconds but we have taken it to 2 different mechanics and nothing shows up on their computer. So nothing is going into memory from the check engine light apparently. Some days the van does well and it runs fine with no problems but it seems sometimes after you turn it off and start it back up the next time it would act up and vise versa. I was told it could be a dirty throttle body so I cleaned it and put new air filter in. It still does it. It recently had tune up.
Im really kind of at a stand still right now because I dont want to put hundreds of dollars in it just looking for the cause of it. Im trying to find any Dodge owners who have had similar problems or the same problems so I can at least get an idea of what Im looking for.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
We also have a 96 Stratus that has 135K miles on it and runs great. Except for the A/C we had to unhook that because we have been having problems with it for a long time and it was causing it to over heat even when we were'nt using it. Its a great car. It has taken a likin and keeps tikin. Can't ask for more.
But any help would be apprecated. Thank you.

 

i'm having same problem with my 98.

 

I'm having the same problem. Bought a scanner and there are no saved codes. I'm presently running with the scanner plugged in in hopes that it will catch the probelm. The posts on here don't seem to have pinpointed what may cause this. They range from corroded wires to various sensors. One of the posts said the crankshaft/camshaft position indicator may not report a problem. When the engine stalls, it will still idle to some extent, but you have to pump the accelerator in order to move the vehicle. It also acts as if the only fuel it is getting is when you pump the accelerator. Anyway if the scanner ever fines out anything, I'll report it here.

concomcad

 

Your stalling is most likel due to a faulty crankshaft position sensor, or a camshaft position sensor (crank is easier to replce and the most common). The speedo dropping off and the transmission downshifting is due to the transmissions output speed sensor, replace that and you are good to go.