V6 Engine Stalls after Ignition Start

[FlyingAvocado]

I just hit my my first major issue... When I start the vehicle, the engine sputters and very roughly tries to idle while the headlights flash rapidly and the driver display rapidly displays "Service Active Damping System," "Auto Emergency Breaking (AEB) Unavailable, Service Required," and "Park Break Temporary Unavailable." I tried starting the vehicle probably a dozen times yesterday and had the same result each time. This happened a couple times around 1800 miles, and I thought that the triggering event was that I forgot to put it in park before pressing the off button... But I managed to get the vehicle started and the next day the check engine light cleared and it was running fine so I didn't bother taking it in. Now at 2k it's inoperable, and I have no idea what could be causing it to misfire and stall.

Anyone else seen this behavior at all?

The other major issue is with the roadside assistance. This part is a little bit of a rant.... But it's totally warranted. I pressed the button and tapped the roadside assistance option on the display, and it took four tries before anything worked. When it did finally make a call, I was connected to Subaru Roadside Assistance - they transferred me to Jeep/Chrysler Roadside Assistance which was an automated system that sent me a text message to fill out a request on a website. After I filled out the form and submitted it, the website told to stay by my phone as someone would contact me shortly... Four hours later and no call back I called the roadside assistance number again and manged to get ahold of a human who indicated that there was no open roadside assistance request. At this point I decided I would rather call AAA since I know they're dependable. Fortunately, the vehicle is in my garage so I scheduled a tow to the dealership for today.

 

[FlyingAvocado]

Well.. they are going to try replacing the engine wiring harness. If that's what it is... hopefully nothing else is fried from a short.

 

[eleceng1979]

Sucks man, even worse when all the perks fail you after the new vehicle did. Suburu roadside service… the layers of Jeep’s incompetence never cease to amaze me

I would bet on a bad battery. The only thing common with all your issues is the power source. A multi system failure/meltdown is possible but very unlikely. Every V6 owner will know what bad batteries are sooner or later. Due to poor engineering, Jeep chose different battery sizes and no way to regulate charging them correctly. So the little one gets over charged while larger one is correctly charged, or inverse.

I would guess the large cranking battery is low on charge due to poor charging and the smaller aux battery is fried due to overcharging. IMO both should be changed as a first diagnostic test, or have each batteries capacity tested properly and independent of each other.

 

[FlyingAvocado]

I would bet on a bad battery. The only thing common with all your issues is the power source. A multi system failure/meltdown is possible but very unlikely. Every V6 owner will know what bad batteries are sooner or later. Due to poor engineering, Jeep chose different battery sizes and no way to regulate charging them correctly. So the little one gets over charged while larger one is correctly charged, or inverse.

I would guess the large cranking battery is low on charge due to poor charging and the smaller aux battery is fried due to overcharging. IMO both should be changed as a first diagnostic test, or have each batteries capacity tested properly and independent of each other.

I think replacing the wiring harness is a reasonable place to start. If the batteries were failing/failed I would expect issues with starting the vehicle and with other systems. The vehicle starts, but misfires and stalls. The rest of the systems seem to be functional as well. I am not sure how bad batteries could cause misfires... sure a bad alternator could cause it to stall if the batteries are dead, but I don't see how it could cause a misfire. My concern is if a wire has shorted out in the harness it could cause other issues (eg: fried ECU/PCM). Let's assume replacing the wiring harness resolves the issue, then the question becomes; How did the harness fail? Was it simply a defective harness, or was there some other contributing factor which is harder to diagnose?

 

[FlyingAvocado]

13 days in the shop, and the dealer text me to let me know they finally received the new wiring harness, and is now working on it. 🤞

 

[FlyingAvocado]

At 28 days in the shop/dealership today. 😞

 

[COJGCL21]

At 28 days in the shop/dealership today. 😞

What ended up being the solution to sort the issue?

 

[FlyingAvocado]

I had to file a lemon lawsuit and after 9 months and they were unable to repair the vehicle and bought it back. After this experience, I'll never buy a Stellantis product ever again.

 

[Jake22]

I'll never buy a Stellantis product ever again.

How about Kia?