My Poor-People Car Passion

This is the kind of thing you see when an engine (and vehicle in general) was designed in a room full of arguing chimpanzees. This is the latest iteration of Dodge’s V6 Pentastar engine, in my 2023 Dodge Durango GT Premium. As you’ll discover in this blog, I love the past Pentastars, and I don’t (yet) entirely hate this one. What you see above, though, is the result of my struggle to simply remove the Alternator.

Why was I doing that, you ask? Well, my Durango was throwing low-voltage codes, which historically, have often been an issue with old batteries. Countless previous-gen Pentastar platforms would throw those codes when the battery, or sometimes Alternator needed replaced. The battery is in no better of a place, directly under the passenger’s seat with plenty of bolts and tie-downs preventing its removal. Which is a blast, considering how common of a repair it is.

But no, the battery ended up checking out fine at Auto Zone. So, on I went to the Alternator. Dear God almighty, was it ever difficult to put that thing back on. “Scott Diesel, why didn’t you take off the wheel and go in from the side? That’s the right way to do it.” My readers might say. Bad news. On the newer Dodges, they’ve blocked that entrance with metal shielding. I’ve no doubt the service techs at Dodge have some perfect way of removing and replacing these Alternators, but I’m just a humble DIY guy.

So, my perfect solution was to spend hours trying to get it back on, after it too checked out fine at the parts stores. It’s at such an angle to reduce ones forearms to pure, agonized mush. The only path that finally succeeded for me, was placing rag after rag under my shaking arms, until I basically had the Alternator against the engine once more. It’s freaking heavy.

Then, I had the immense displeasure of still having to line it up with the bolt holes. They added a bump around one of the holes to help, but it worked about as well as giving a blind person a longer cane, in a room full of alligators. Only through brute strength, and more curse words that I’ve used in years, did a bolt finally connect and begin to thread in. I’m not sure if I’ll ever forget the relief I felt when that bolt started turning, and didn’t just immediately fall back out when I stopped squeezing against it.

Case in point: be weary of Dodge vehicles after 2018. The component designs are only getting worse, despite how much I love the look of their vehicles. The problem ended up just being a thermostat housing (not even the thermostat itself) that needed replaced. A $60 part, that finally just stopped reporting the coolant temp altogether.

I’ll never stop loving Dodge vehicles, but my goodness, why did they make it so hard on themselves?