PNWjeeper

Well my wife and I recently paid off her 2005 Chrysler Pacifica. It felt great knowing we would have a few extra dollars hanging around at the end of the month, that is until the engine started revving when at a complete stop and the speedo would read 20 MPH when clearly we weren't moving. Now it's not under a warranty and after 2 weeks I was actually glad that it threw codes . Turned out to be a bunch of transmission codes didn't get the actual codes but I wasn't interested in the specifics to be honest, I had done a little research on the topic before hand and turns out this is fairly common also turns out it's the alternator that is the culprit even though the transmission is what the computer says is at fault. Well tonight I messed around with it a bit and saw three wires coming from the alternator one big red one and two others on a separate connector. Well I disconnected the two wires and viola the annoying whine the car has always made stopped the engine settled back to a normal sound and all appeared well....except the voltage on the battery went from 13.6V down to 11.8V and very slowly dropped.

To me that really narrows down my problems to the alternator or wherever those two small wires attach to. Or possibly battery
How does my logic sound on that?

PNWjeeper

Well replaced the battery, which was going bad anyway, and no change. Next up new alternator and refreshing the grounds. After that.....transmission

aroundincircles

I feel your pain!




we paid off my wife's car this time last year, (2011 flex), and it has been a dream maintenance wise, requiring only one repair (blend door motor, $65) outside of maintenance and tires.

our other cars? Constant work. This last weekend I had to replace the upper and lower intake gaskets on the v6 in my Mazda B4000 (ford ranger 4.0l) Took me 10 total hours, including having to stop and look up how to do stuff multiple times, and a couple of trips to the parts store... weekend before, I dealt with the brakes on my XJ, both still need more work... it would help if I bought cars build within this century, but that's not fun, now is it?

PNWjeeper

So much more fun having older cars.

Looks like even in park the transmission believes it's supposed to be in second gear, it used to be the rear hatch would open in park but today we had to shut off the car to get it to open.
Man I REALLY hope it is just the alternator putting out to much power or something weird like that and not the transmission cuz that would suck beyond belief right now.

PNWjeeper

Success!
Thank you internet for all your useful information. Thanks to chryslerforum I was able to solve an apparent transmission issue on my wife's 05 Chrysler Pacifica 3.5L by replacing the alternator. I also learned that I now own two cars that have grounding problems, so I preformed the same ground refreshing as I did in my jeep many years ago and hopefully that will be the last issue I have for many years.

aroundincircles

awesome! nice to have such a simple fix!

PNWjeeper

Yeah it's fantastic, looks like the alternator has been on it's way out since we got it 2-3 years ago. It runs and sounds better now then it did then. I'm glad it was simple and I'm glad after having such success with this forum that I knew what to look for with my wife's car. Otherwise who knows what a mechanic would have said given the CEL all came out as trans problems and not a single thing pointed to the alternator.

aroundincircles

Speaking of trans issues, looks like my b4000 is haivng some... hopefully its just a leaky gasket (common issue) that will cost me <$100 in parts, and a couple of hours on my back under my truck. Just need to wait to save up the $$ for the stuff. its annoying because I just did a big repair on it, and was hoping to go more than a couple of weeks before another one.

PNWjeeper

Good luck with the repair. I got real lucky with the alternator, "list price" was about $360, standard price was around $230 but I've got a buddy who's dad has an account they let me use at Orileys and they get great discounts so I only paid $131.66.
I'm hoping I'm done with anything other then regular maintenance for quite some time now.

aroundincircles

That's a great discount on the part! I'm a bit jealous of that!