The New Van

[J Wikoff]

Brought her home today. I might get better shots tomorrow. It's a '14 Touring-L. 2nd and 3rd row screens with BluRay, sunroof, nav, keyless operation, heated steering wheel, front and 2nd row seats, remote start.

[CMNTMXR57]

I approve. Looked like Stow-N-Go seats in the dealer ad.

[J Wikoff]

They are. You can get non stow-n-go in the second row, but it actually costs another $300 or so. We also got the lifetime extended warranty that covers nearly everything but wear items. At 30k miles a year, I figure it'll pay for itself.

[CMNTMXR57]

YES... It will!!

[J Wikoff]

Especially at the corporate discount rate.

[J Wikoff]

Hmm. Next step: Discover if the roof top carrier will fit. The new style of roof rack only has a couple fixed positions for the forward crossbar. Hope it fits. That carrier was a bargain and it's cavernous. You can see it hanging from the ceiling in the second pic.

[repinS]

I see the Bonneville has its own rooftop carrier too

Decent van, I drove a Pentastar-equipped Caravan a few months ago. My only beef was that the trans would keep wanting to upshift, even after adding throttle for a kickdown. Otherwise, not bad!

[J Wikoff]

Did you have the econ mode on? It seems happy to downshift with it off.

[repinS]

Unless it's on by default, nope. Maybe not quite an upshift, it might have been an eager torque converter lockup scheme too. More throttle? Here's more lockup!

[00Beast]

Nice! We rented something similar (fewer screens, etc, but still Nav, leather, Stow and Go) this past weekend in FL. Not a bad van, but the trans on that one seemed buggy. Almost seemed to be slipping...

[Saturn Simon]

Very smart-looking 'van. There's a reasonable number of those around over here.

[J Wikoff]

A few features I didn't note before that it has: blind spot and rear cross path detection via radar, HDMI input, backup camera, rain sensing wipers, auto-dimming bright headlights, inner and outer auto dim mirrors, Sirius radio, roof rack that stows down into the roof, and the super console. Facebookers will recognize that as the large drawer that I found a stash of small bananas (plantains?) in a recent rental. The wheels have a little bit of tint to them, and it goes nice with the black paint.

I couldn't help myself and bought T&C S style black bezel headlights. I'm trying to call the van "Vader", but the wife wants to call it "Elvira".

We found one annoyance on Saturday when it was raining like a... well, it was raining a lot. The sliding doors are power only. You can't whip them open and closed real fast. Tug on the handle, and they move along at their own pace.

So far, no complaints about the transmission.

[CMNTMXR57]

Rain sensing wipers are annoying as heck... I have them on the Caddy, and thankfully I can override the feature. A sprinkle sends them into nuclear window clearing speed, yet a torrential downpour they seem to think the slowest intermittent setting is perfect.

And Elvira is ok, as long as it or her has big, wait probably better off not said...

[J Wikoff]

The wipers worked well on Saturday when it was raining.

[92BonneSE]

The trans in the newer vans do shift a little weird. Drive Dodges all the time at work. Mine is a 2009 and it has the 3.3, which is slow as can be but shifts normal but it has the 4spd. Any 2011+ I have driven with the 6 spd I agree with repinS. Most noticeably when econ mode is on. The worst is when Im just driving on the highway and go to speed up, it will not downshift till the gas is like halfway down, then it drops 2 gears and guns it. Needs to be a little smoother with some shifts. But overall a great van and not something that would stop me from buying it if I was in the market.

[Bugsi]

We have a 2011 Touring-L. Regarding the shifting, with the Economy mode it skips a couple of the lower gears and the shifts are harsher. We keep it off. With it off, the programming does shift to higher gears pretty quickly, for fuel economy. If we're driving in winding hills or something, it has gearshift "tap" feature. You can tap-left on the shifter and it kicks you down one gear, locking out the top gear. More left-taps kick you down more gears, so if I'm in winding hills, I might tap-down to 4 or 5 until I'm back to open road and need the higher gears. A couple tap-rights and it's back to normal.

We're really enjoying our 2011 T&C. Dual DVD players (one is behind the radio faceplate, the other is in the lower dash) with middle and rear seat entertainment systems keep our kids happy. If you have kids and don't have them already, GET THE WIRELESS HEADPHONES. They're around $12 at Amazon and require no configuration.

Our T&C burned a valve in one of the heads. This was a factory defect in the design of one of the heads due to too-small cooling passages. It was redesigned in 2012, and Chrysler replaced the head under warranty for us. The rear hatch struts failed on ours and those were covered by our warranty too. The spare tire under the car between the front seats is a pain if you ever have to use it. The lowering mechanism thing is a little wonky on ours. The tire shop said it felt like it was stripped and had trouble getting it raised up again, but they managed to get it to work.

What size wheels and tires does yours have? My wife has ours out right now, but I know when we bought it, there were some T&C's with a size smaller tire (same rim size). Ours had the larger size (and lower aspect ratio) and ours felt WORLDS better in terms of handling and ride comfort. (I'll update what size ours is when I get a look at it later today.)

[J Wikoff]

The tires are 225/65r17 I think.

[driverjohn2005]

Recently rented one of those while on vacation. Not a bad van at all; congrats on the purchase!

[J Wikoff]

I put these RT or S black headights and the Mopar billet grill on today. The rest of the van is dirty. That will change later this week.

[CMNTMXR57]

LOL! You're modifying the family mini-van.

We still gotta hook up, I'd like to get that Navigation update from ya.