2006 Chrysler Town & Country Problems & Issues

On the 2001-2010 Chrysler Town & Country, owner reports for these vans point to two separate cooling problems. The first is a water pump leak. Coolant drips from a small hole on the back of the pump, on the passenger side just behind the front wheel. That hole is a vent behind the pump's internal seal, so coolant coming out of it means the seal has failed. Owners report having to keep topping up coolant. The second is the radiator fans not switching on. The engine then overheats in slow traffic or at idle, the A/C cools poorly when the van is not moving, and the engine computer may store code P1491 (radiator fan relay circuit). The fan problem can be the relay, its wiring or fuse, the coolant temperature sensor, or the fan motors themselves. Shops sometimes replace the thermostat during a water pump job. If the engine keeps overheating, the head gasket can be damaged, so stop driving when the gauge climbs.

On the 1996-2007 Chrysler Town & Country, the 41TE (A604 Ultradrive) four-speed automatic used behind the 3.3L and 3.8L V6 in 1996-2007 Town & Country vans is the single most-reported failure on the nameplate. Clutch material and worn friction debris circulate in the fluid, plug the small feed passages in the valve body and pump, and starve the planetary gearsets of lubrication. The result is a burned front/rear clutch pack or a shattered planetary carrier. Owners commonly report the failure preceded by a stuttering or repeated 1-2 shift, delayed forward/reverse engagement with a double bump, and limp-in (second gear only). Aggravating factors documented on the owner forums include use of generic ATF instead of Chrysler ATF+4, a missed 30k-mile fluid service, and a weak/AC-ripple-producing alternator or a bad output shaft speed sensor signal confusing the TCM. This is the 4-speed unit and is a separate story from the later 62TE 6-speed used from 2007 on.

On the 2005-2006 Chrysler Town & Country, the front impact sensors on 2005-2006 vans were built with brass bushings that corrode, particularly in road-salt states. The corrosion cracks the sensor housing and lets water in, which kills the sensor. A failed front sensor sets the airbag lamp and can prevent the front airbags from deploying in a frontal crash. NHTSA covered it twice: an initial 2007 campaign (2005 models) that replaced sensors with more corrosion-resistant units in the salt-belt states and offered a lifetime warranty on the front crash sensors elsewhere, then a 2010 campaign covering 2005-2006 vans in the salt-belt states whose sensors crack under environmental exposure. Because the remedy was partly conditional on state of registration, plenty of vans in the field still carry the original sensors.

On the 2005-2016 Chrysler Town & Country, the Stow 'n Go system uses a plastic pull-ring latch in the floor panel ahead of each second-row seat; the ring tugs a cable that releases the heavy floor bin lid so the seat can fold in. The rings sit where every passenger steps and are pulled hard to lift a heavy lid, so they crack and break off - forum owners describe it as near-universal on high-mileage vans, with at least one broken ring on almost every example. Separately, the seat's own release cable stretches, unclips or snaps at the crimp, which leaves the second-row seat locked upright or, worse, stuck part-way down and unable to latch back into the floor strikers. A seat that is not latched to the floor is a restraint problem, not just an inconvenience.

On the 1996-2010 Chrysler Town & Country, the pushrod 3.3L and 3.8L V6s develop a well-known cluster of external oil leaks as the gaskets harden. The rear (firewall-side) valve cover gasket is the classic one: oil runs down the back of the block and onto the exhaust, producing a burning-oil smell with no obvious puddle. The other repeat offenders documented by minivan-forum owners, in rough order, are the oil pressure sending unit, the oil cooler-to-filter-adapter seal, the filter adapter-to-block gasket, the crankshaft/harmonic balancer seal and the rear main. Because several of these drip onto the same area, owners frequently replace the wrong one first. This is a 3.3/3.8 pushrod-engine pattern and does not describe the later 3.6L Pentastar, whose leak comes from the plastic oil cooler housing instead.