Have a 97 town an country has no odemeter reading an van will not stay running?

Answer 1

I have the same van and have had a problem similar to yours. My van ran fine after purchasing it used for a couple of years then the problems began. I would go to start my van and noticed that none of the guages were working. The van would crank and run a few seconds and die. I would pull the battery cables for a little while to reset the computer on it and it would crank and run for days , weeks, or sometimes months. The problem eventually got worse and have had it towed home several times only to have it crank and run fine the next day. I researched the net and found owners of the same type van with the same problem. Many of them took their vehicles to mechanics and even dealerships to be diagnosed and repaired only to spend a great deal of money and still not get the vehicled fixed. I don't know if you are losing all your gauges when you try to crank it but I would just about bet your are losing them if the odometer isn't working and it won't stay cranked and running. The BCM, or Body Control Module, can be the problem, a wiring harness, the alarm circuit or many other things can cause things to get goofy on the town and country. It has many modules and electronic circuits that all tie together at some point and monitored by a computer module or modules. I found the solution to my problem on the net.

Before spending a few hundred bucks on new modules, etc., I would look at the Gauge Pod. The gauge pod ( the section of the dash that contains the speedo/tachometer, etc. is a module itself and is easy to remove eventhough a bit time consuming. Removing dashboard components on the town and country have to be done in a certain order to get to it in order to uplug it and remove it. I bet if you did unplug it you would find that your van will crank and run. Purchase a Haynes auto repair book on the Chrysler town and country for the 97 model. There is a section in the book that explains the steps in detail to remove the instrument cluster.

After removing the cluster, you will find that there are a couple of PC boards on it in the back of it. The PC boards and the solder connections on it can become damaged after years of hot and cold weather. The PC boards might be cracked or more commonly the solder joints can become loose from the expansion and contraction of hot and cold conditions , as was the case with mine.

I got a magnifying glass and carefully inspected the PC boards for cracks between the solder connections, the plugs that are soldered to the boards at the solder joints, and all the other solder joints on the board. I then got out my old soldering iron and went over all the joints and carefully reheated each one. When I was done, I reinstalled the instrument cluster, or gauge pod, put the dash back together and put my repair work to the test. IT WORKED AND HAVE HAD NO PROBLEMS SINCE FOR OVER A YEAR AND A HALF NOW !!!

So check that gauge pod first before spending a great deal of money getting other things replaced that can also cause the problem. If you don't get into the soldering thing or you don't have the skills to do so, you can probably pick up a replacement gauge pod/instrument cluster , which is basically a module itself, from a junk yard or an auto parts store or dealership and just simply take out the old one and plug in a replacemrnt and reinstall the dashboard parts,