2014 Dodge Journey SXT. At about 40k, the transmission went out. I was driving and then the car was obviously in neutral but the indicator said drive. I limped to the side of the road, shut it off for a few minutes and restarted it. Things were ok for a few minutes but it happened again and it went downhill from there. The dealer replaced the clutch and torque converter (under warranty, Thank God!). Now the Journey has about 72K on it and it goes off power train warranty at 80k.
Is there anything I can do to have it checked before it goes off warranty? Can/will the dealer tell anything by inspecting it and/or changing the transmission fluid, etc?
If you have them look at it there will be a charge and most likely will not predict a future failure. Look in your manual at the service schedule and see what needs to be done by miles or time and go from there. If it seems fine now I would just drive on.
I presume this is a conventional automatic transmission. How many speeds does it have?
Some shops offer a pre-warranty expiration service. No harm asking. Once you find a shop who does it, a test drive followed by a visual inspection and a proper fluid & filter change certainly wouldn’t hurt, and could well be diagnostic of a looming problem. Make sure the shop sieves all the fluid that comes out for signs of metal debris, and carefully inspects the bottom of the pan for objects like broken snap rings laying there. Note that removing the pan isn’t economically feasible with some transmissions, in which case you just replace the fluid.
All that said, if I had that situation and the transmission had been rebuilt at 40K , I’d probably just cross my fingers and hope for the best. It’s possible monkeying around trying to determine if it is about to break could well do more harm than good. If it’s working ok now, leave well enough alone. Don’t fix it, if it isn’t broken.
This doesn’t look like a transmission eating car so you could take your chances or sell it. I always look at the other complaints on any car. Check out https://www.carcomplaints.com/Dodge/Journey/2014/transmission/
Yes, there are transmission complaints but not that many. There are no serious flags on this model either. I am personally not a Chrysler person at all but this doesn’t look like a horrible car. All of them have their flaws. Having a fluid change and analysis done wouldn’t be a bad idea if you are worried. You can send the used fluid to labs where the do an analysis of the fluid based on the wear particles present or if there has been excessive heat and such.