2011 Dodge Grand Caravan stalls when driving then has to sit for twenty minutes before it starts again. There can be months or weeks in-between stalls.
What happens during that 20 minutes? Does the starter motor turn over the engine? How are instrument panel lights and headlights working during that time?
The problem might be with the Crankshaft Position sensor being effected by heat
https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php?pk=8373308&cc=1504648&jsn=406
If the computer loses the signal from this sensor, the computer doesn’t think the crankshaft is rotating. So the computer see’s no reason to operate the ignition/fuel systems. So the engine shuts off.
Once the engine sits and cools off, the sensor works again and the engine runs
One way to check for this is, start the engine when it’s cold. While the engine idles, take a hair drier/heat gun and heat up the sensor.
If the engine shuts off, it’s the crank sensor.
Tester
Good ideas above. A failing fuel pump is another possibility.
Everything works fine but the car won’t start, it just cranks and cranks until you leave it alone for 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes you can hear something electrical in the dashboard ‘wind’ or ‘buzz’ and then the car starts right up. It has now happened three times in the last two weeks. It was having trouble starting last week and I discovered a website pointing to a faulty fuel pump relay in the TIPM of many Dodge models. I bought the test/bypass cable from this site and it solved the starting problem but the stalling problem has remained. FYI- I am not a mechanic. Thanks for your help.
Kevin O’Neill
kevo121198@aol.com
732-678-3756
Fuel pump was replaced last year. Everything works fine but the car won’t start, it just cranks and cranks until you leave it alone for 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes you can hear something electrical in the dashboard ‘wind’ or ‘buzz’ and then the car starts right up. It has now happened three times in the last two weeks. It was having trouble starting last week and I discovered a website pointing to a faulty fuel pump relay in the TIPM of many Dodge models. I bought the test/bypass cable from this site and it solved the starting problem but the stalling problem has remained. FYI- I am not a mechanic. Thanks for your help.
Kevin O’Neill
kevo121198@aol.com
732-678-3756
You have some pretty strong clues there, but I don’t know enough to suggest what to do except: try the minivan forum at allpar.com. It’s a site that specializes in Chrysler topics. I have had lots of help over the years from people there, for my past 1999 Voyager and present 2007 Town and Country.
Best of luck and please keep us informed.
PS - You might be better off removing your email and phone number. If you look at your post, you see a pencil logo below right. Click on that to edit. Someone here told me about it a couple months ago and I use it a lot now.
If the cranks but won’t start happens again, first thing I’d do would be to test for spark at a spark plug during cranking. That’s a fairly easy experiment. Given what you say above, the fuel pump electrical supply seems to be problematic too. Easiest way to test that is to monitor the voltage right at the fuel pump electrical connector (near the gas tank). If I had that problem myself and the connector pins at the pump didn’t looked burned I’d wire in a volt meter connected to that point right at the pump connector, so I could watch the pump voltage as I drove. Whenever a fuel pump electrical problem is suspected, the fuel filter should be suspected too. A clogged fuel filter puts additional load on the fuel pump.
Years ago I had a VW Rabbit w/a fuel pump electrical supply problem that caused me no end to the grief. That car would start up & run fine for 30 minutes, then stall out completely while driving down the freeway with absolutely no warning. If I waited along side the freeway for 30 minutes, it would start up again. Very unsafe as you might imagine. In the end to solve it I had to replace both the fuel pump relay and the entire relay and fuse junction box. And the fuel filter.