I thought I would share some good information for the Chrysler Pentastar engines from some real world experiences I have had with it.
The first year these engines were introduced I was working for a company that had a fleet of 95 Dodge Caravans. Over the first couple of years that these engines came out the company decided to replace their aging fleet over slowly to newer Dodge Caravans with these engines.
Including the one I bought from the company when I left and gave it to my dad.
These vans were fully loaded weight wise from day one and weren't treated well by the folks driving them. They also saw oil changes when they were convenient and not when the OLM or some set number by the oil change shop said it was due.
When I left 4 years later most of these vans were being traded in with very high mileage on them (300K km's / 180K-ish Miles) Pretty much all of them survived without any catastrophic failures like engines/transmissions (I think we had 2 but we attributed them to the drivers).
Anyway I knew I was going to buy one of them for my dad at trade-in time because he's a mechanic and mine had about 180,000km at that point but had been rust proofed and well looked after by myself. His is still going strong at 300K KM's (180K-ish Miles) and he's actually down in South Carolina with it right now.
I'm throughly impressed with the Pentastar V6, especially with the slight revised ones in these later years and I thought given the sample size I saw and the abuse they took and survived that I would post it here for anyone contemplating this great engine / van type.
Cheers.
The first year these engines were introduced I was working for a company that had a fleet of 95 Dodge Caravans. Over the first couple of years that these engines came out the company decided to replace their aging fleet over slowly to newer Dodge Caravans with these engines.
Including the one I bought from the company when I left and gave it to my dad.
These vans were fully loaded weight wise from day one and weren't treated well by the folks driving them. They also saw oil changes when they were convenient and not when the OLM or some set number by the oil change shop said it was due.
When I left 4 years later most of these vans were being traded in with very high mileage on them (300K km's / 180K-ish Miles) Pretty much all of them survived without any catastrophic failures like engines/transmissions (I think we had 2 but we attributed them to the drivers).
Anyway I knew I was going to buy one of them for my dad at trade-in time because he's a mechanic and mine had about 180,000km at that point but had been rust proofed and well looked after by myself. His is still going strong at 300K KM's (180K-ish Miles) and he's actually down in South Carolina with it right now.
I'm throughly impressed with the Pentastar V6, especially with the slight revised ones in these later years and I thought given the sample size I saw and the abuse they took and survived that I would post it here for anyone contemplating this great engine / van type.
Cheers.
Last edited: