rev up your engines, welcome to my Thursday video where I answer a viewers
question with an entire video, FS APO asks why does Chrysler have such a poor
history of reliability, what are some specific things that tend to fall apart
on Chrysler's and what do you think of some of the modern engines that they
make like the pentastar v6 and the hellcat V8, I'm going to start that with a little
history of course in the beginning, my grandfather was a mechanic before me
even he couldn't stand Chrysler's because they just had poor quality
control and they often just use cheap materials, in a 60s we had customers at
my father's corner gas station that had brand new Chrysler's, they got 7500 miles
out of their tires before they wore down to the nub because they were using
cheaper 2 ply tires, they were just trying to save money when they built
them, now you won't see that today because there's too many liability suits
involved, if you put crappy tires on cars, so most modern tires come with decent
tires for safety reasons, they put on cheap tires and they blew up and people
were killed, they would have their pants sued off of them, but that stuff didn't
exist back in the 60s, we also had customers with Chryslers they bought
brand-new and they started to ride poor so they brought them in and my
grandfather checked them out, and so he took it for a ride, came back
put up on a lift and said well, your shock absorbers are all worn out and the
customer with the Chrysler just said, hey how could it be worn out I've only got
10,000 miles on this vehicle, well shocks in those days they're pretty
easy to change, they had a bolt in the top and a bolt on the bottom, so my grandfather
said ok watch this and he pulled off one of the shocks and they're supposed to be
real tight to go up and down as they absorb the shock, but the shock that he
took off was like a Gazoo, it's just went, so it was worn out and with that
small amount of mileage it shouldn't wear but guess what they were using cheap parts
they wear out faster and throughout history they made lots of bad design
take the Dodge minivan, hey that was one of the worst minivan
transmissions ever made, I had one customer that had bought five of those
minivans and the first for the transmission went out on all of them so I said
to him, why do you keep buying these minivans from Chrysler, to which he
responded, well my wife loves them cuz we can go to the soccer
games and we can fit all the friends in, so she liked it because, they had a lot
of cupholders, she was happy with it and he said I want to keep my wife happy, so when
he bought the last one, he'd bought the other ones used, he bought the last one
new and he said I'll keep it until the warranty goes out and I'll get rid of it
I don't have to worry about having to pay for another transmission, which made
sense in his mind but guess what, before it went out of warranty the transmission
broke on that one too, he did get it fixed under warranty but really five of
them in a row transmissions went out on every single one of them and the answer
to the second part of his question, about the modern engines, you got to know a
little bit more about Chrysler, they're owned by Fiat an Italian company, Fiat is
not known for making exceptionally long-lasting cars, the acronym in the
United States for Fiat is, fix it again Tony, cuz they keep breaking over and
over again, so now you have a combination of two companies neither of which was
making such hot vehicles, so overall hey Chrysler just doesn't make very good
vehicles, now is the Pentastar v-6 engine goes, they had a lot of problems with heads
the heads weren't made right and the engines wouldn't run right and they had
to rebuild them for quite a few people under warranty, now these Pentastar v6
engines are made in different places, some of them are made in Michigan, but a
lot of them are made in Mexico, now I've had personal costumers that had good luck
with the Pentastar engines, but I've also had customers that had problems with
the heads on those engines, I don't know maybe it was, some of them you got the
engines built Michigan, but the ones that broke were the ones made in Mexico, I
personally wouldn't want an engine made in Mexico, I don't care what anybody says,
so if you got trying to figure out where your engine was made, hey me I just stay
away from that company entirely, but when it comes to the hellcat 6.2 liter v8
engine that actually is very well built powerful engine, it puts out 707 horsepower
a real screaming engine, but these days a lot of people don't want to mess around with
an engine that's that powerful because it's an absolute gas hog too, let's face it, last
of the giant dinosaurs probably, but if you want one of those you don't care
about the cost and the poor gas mileage, their exellent engines and it's
probably because of where they're made, because they're made
Windsor Ontario Canada, and Canadians they've always had a history of making
pretty good engines especially in Windsor, if you know anything about
Mustangs, one of their great engines was the 302 Windsor v8 that was
made in Windsor, those are good engines you could still buy a crate engine from them
to put in a Mustang, and guess what, from Chrysler you can buy just the 6.2 liter
v8 engine that's in the Hellcat, they call it the hell crate engine because
it's a crate engine, hey their very good engines, can't say that I buy the whole car that
it came with but hey, that's a really good engine if you want to build your
own car, so now you know a little bit more about Chrysler's and since this is
the Thursday segment where I answer a viewers question, place your own question
on the YouTube comments below and I'll pick the best ones to make a single
video to answer your questions, and where else can you find a guy with
50 years experience of fixing cars to answer your own question with a video, so
if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to
ring that Bell!