Does the standard quad 100hp chip adjust shift points? Sorry this is so long but its a heck of a story....Read this and let me know if you have any ideas.

Well, some time ago I brought up a small quirk my truck was showing immediatly after a professionally done service where the tranny would decide that it didn't want to shift from 2nd to 3rd. This usually happened within a couple miles of starting it with the truck mostly if not completly cooled off and would usually only happened once a day IF it decided to throw this little nuisance at me. I feel its important to mention that it wouldn't do it every day and that it seemed to be accompanied by a very quick rise in to operating temp but never over, this is hard to prove because I wasn't ever paying real close attention to the gauge before it started slipping. Now for the Brain buster part. If you were coasting relatively quickly, say above 40 or so, you could stick the lever in neutral for approx. 100-200ft and go back to drive and away you went with no more problems the rest of the drive. If you were going slower, no matter what you had to stop and put it in neutral for 1-2 sec.s and then away you could go again. No matter what this was true everytime it happened. So...being as I was on the road almost all summer and I only put 2,000 miles on the truck between me and my mother who drove it for a week; this was a common occurence. While I was on the road I had the truck to the dealership once to get the fluid changed, after which all this started, twice after coming home for the fourth of july, and one weekend after that, They still couldn't get it to reproduce the problem. So in the infinite wisdom of Dodge engineers and some of the techs at the dealerships, a tsb for a solenoid was found on the second trip which of course was not covered under the powertrain warranty and cost me $488 or something to that effect. After replacing that I was assured that it was fixed and my parents went to pick it up. Of course it made it home just fine so I'm thinking Yes finally its better. I come home on the 20th and get in it to drive it home and I can barely get it to move which I attributed to it sitting on an incline with the nose down for three weeks and the TC not having any fluid in it. Once I get out on the road It runs perfect for about a mile to a mile and a half then I let the TC unlock as I'm making a curve. From there I can barely climb the little rise in the road to keep from getting run over. I stop and do the customary neutral shift sit and go and everthing is fine; the next morning it does it again with in 200yds of the driveway so now I'm ******. Of course I had plans to leave for Nebraska to visit my bro and some friends on wed. so I make this perfectly clear to the service writer who my family and I have done lots of buisiness with and he asssures me that they won't do anything to jeporidise(sp) my departure on wed morning. I call tues and he tells me that they are going to put a valve body in it under warranty and he's not sure it will be in till first thing in the morning. Wed. morning rolls around and I sleep in a little and call about 9:30 and he says it will be done in about an hour and a half. I get there at 11 and the techs are just filling it with tranny fluid and I'm about to get on the road . So while the tech is taking the truck off the hoist, I'm talking to the service writer who tells me that they didn't change the valve body all they did was clean the old one now I'm getting nervous as the tech speeds away in my truck on his test drive. A minute or two later he comes back and pulls right back on the hoist. Now they decide to put on a new VB which will take 2hrs tops so the service writer lets me borrow his truck to run and get some food and mess around for a little while and confides to me that he had the wrong tech working on my truck until that morning, but everything will be taken care of now. The tech puts in the VB in less than 40 mins after lunch and goes on another test run and can barely make it across the interstate overpass and back. Now I'm very angry as 2pm is quickly approaching. To make a longer story short, we traced wiring cut the tap wire to my guage pod from the temp sender, which the service writer seemed convinced was going to void my warranty because I had tapped into wires and had a whole slew of stuff under my hood, all of which only seemed to make the problem worse. By close that day I had helped to trace almost every wire coming out of the tranny on my pickup. just as I was leaving to get my rental they found a wire that showed to be broken. When I returned twenty min later, it had been determined that the wire being jumped to make it a complete circuit didn't fix it and they had run the diagnostic check on the computer which showed that the PCM wasn't telling a relay to function which was causing it not to shift. They didn't know why it was doing it or how to fix it, but they did learn that I had my chip on the truck just before I had brought it in. So, then they were claiming that the chip, which had been off since when I had the fluid changed and had only been back on the pickup since I got back on the 20th for a maximum of 25 miles, had burned the pcm up. I of course countered with the argument of why is it getting worse the more stuff YOU do to it then with the chip off . Of course they could not explain, so they dropped that argument except for the any talk about warranty repair because DODGE would surely come looking to see why a truck with a new VB would need a new PCM all in the same day and find the trace of the chip on the ECM. by now it is closing time and I have spent all day at the dealership trying to chase gremlins out of my Tranny. I went to Nebraska in the 2wd f150 rental which was the smoothest riding truck I have ever been in but also the most uncomfortable pos ever. In conclusion, I went to Gainesville today to get everything in line to go to school and stopped in the check on the truck which is still in the same bay as when I left wed evening and the service writer tells me that they have killed chased out the tranny Gremlin and turned him into an AC gremlin and so now they get to fix my AC for free before I can have my truck back. If I didn't have bad luck I wouldn't have any I don't think.
Once again, sorry this was so long winded,
Nick

 

Interesting post.

What I find very interesting is the fact the dealer found out you had been running a quad box even though you removed it prior to taking it to him.

It has been my understanding the box is undetectable if removed before taking the truck in.

Could you shed some light on how the dealer discovered.

Was box and all wiring removed and the info from the box found on the trucks PCM?

Funny how they fixed the tranny problem and now the AC has problems. You would think that it would have to be computer related unless they crossed up some wiring doing all that testing.

Please keep us informed of developments, I'm sure there are many of us that await the result of the box discovery and it's consequences on your warranty.

 

I am pretty sure that the quad box doesn't adjust shift points, but I am not 100%

 

Your story just confirms there are no more bad vehicles JUST BAD MECHANICS!

 

Yes the quad left a trace on the ECM and showed how many times the ignition cycled since it was removed. Maybe Quad will be lurking around here and chime in on the PCM involvement. I was under the impression that the quad was an ecm only box. Has Anyone ever heard of such a crazy problem?

 

Just got off the phone with the service writer who tells me that my truck is back to 100%. The valve body they replaced that had nothing wrong with it to start with is covered under warranty for a total of $900, however, the labor after that point plus any parts or incidentals comes to a total of, and brace yourself for this cause its making my heart flutter, $1200. He says that he was going to only charge me $50hr. shop time to cut the bill down to $800~ but that his shop manager came over and looked under the hood and saw my wiring for my guage pod, my piaa lights, and my turbo timer, and went over his head and charged me full shop time. What a nice guy!

 

What quad box?
I thought they just interruppted the signals that got sent to the ECM, and changed them.
Only trace being higher then normal levals.

 

What exactly did they say they found? How did they prove the quad box if any box was on there? As far as I understand it is undetectable.

 

Just got off the phone with the service writer who tells me that my truck is back to 100%. The valve body they replaced that had nothing wrong with it to start with is covered under warranty for a total of $900, however, the labor after that point plus any parts or incidentals comes to a total of, and brace yourself for this cause its making my heart flutter, $1200. He says that he was going to only charge me $50hr. shop time to cut the bill down to $800~ but that his shop manager came over and looked under the hood and saw my wiring for my guage pod, my piaa lights, and my turbo timer, and went over his head and charged me full shop time. What a nice guy!

P.S. Donations in memory of any financial cushion that I had prior to this little incident can be sent directly to me.

 

They hooked their little magic scanner box up to it and claimed they knew it had only been off for a few key cycles. Bluff? possibly, but at that point in the day I honestly just wanted it fixed and told them in all honesty that I had put it on when I got back and it only went ~25 miles with it on. I figured that they already had it traced and that I had to make it clear to them that the box hadn't really been on long enough to fry the pcm like they were claiming at the time. The only plus I can see to this is that Dodge didn't get involved so if i have something go wrong that I can't contribute to the chip then I can pull it and maybe reset the comp to cover my tracks. I don't mind paying to play if thats the reason something breaks, but I can't see how this is anything I did to it.

 

I would like to hear Quad's take on this also.

I think he just reads the performance section on this forum though.

If someone knows him perhaps they can relay this thread and have him give his thoughts on this one.

If the box can indeed be detected it will be a sad day for many if they take their truck in for a problem.

 

Maybe a stupid question, as I am a 2nd gen driver. But did they adjust your transmission when they serviced it. I believe the auto tranny shifts into first gear between the 2nd and 3rd gear shift, and if they adjusted the front band too tight, the tranny can get locked up?

 

Got the truck back and here is what the invoice says
Job#1: body tran, warranty; Fluid aut, warranty.
Job#2: C/S trans not shifting correctly
Found Trans pressure normal, Wiring at fault. Found 12v supply to trans open, found fan module wires rubbing on frame causing trans not to shift. Hard wired from VDC to trans, repaired wire.
The only parts charged to the truck were the valve body, under warranty, and a can of parts cleaner for $4.37. total labor and parts for job #2 1110.13 plus $100 deductible for the VB bringing the Total to $1210.49 for a wire that didn't start chaffing until after the same dealership changed the tranny fluid. Coincidence? I hope. If I find out otherwise, well lets just say Death to the Infidels.
This wasn't covered under warranty because and this is an indirect quote from the manager through the service writer, "Its not OUR fault he has all that STUFF under his hood."
Apparently my adding guages, a turbo timer, and driving lights made the wires rub on the frame and short the circuit to the tranmission

 

It is not possible to reset the key cycles unless you unlock the PCM. Not really sure how to explain it other than that?

That would be the equivalent of saying if you unhook your MAP sensor then the computer will reset everything??

Sounds like a bad dealer that figured he could get what he wanted due to the circumstances. I am not really sure but it sort of sounded like the module or wiring harness might have still been on the truck? Hard to say and it doesn't really say for sure. It says turned "off" in one part and another it says took it off?

Regardless there ain't no way my module, the EZ, Juice, TST, TS, Banks, VA or any other similar type module could reset the key cycles.

 

Thanks for the comment Quad.
I could not figure out how the dealer could have found evidence of a box unless he left the wiring harness in the truck.

I don't understand about unlocking the PCM clearing the key cycles but I'll take your word for it.