My vehicle HAD those issues that you listed. With the exception of the torque steer (my wife doesn't know the difference), the others were repaired/resolved. The tire issue is pending.

Where did I say that I LOVE it??? I did say however, that I would NOT buy one again.

It is a NEED for my wife, but LOVE never was mentioned.

Yes, I am VERY happy with my dealer. They did not build the vehicle, or caused the issues.

But they did repair it when it needed it and they do all of the scheduled maintenance for it and treat me VERY fairly with the price for those services as well as throw in a rental car or shuttle. I literally have only popped the hood twice, and that was to look around for the engine noise.

Even though the news wasn't out at the time of my purchase, yes, I was VERY apprehensive about getting the vehicle with the PAX system (ANY runflat system w/o a spare, actually). And as we all know, my concerns were valid.

But my wife needed another minivan and I had heard great things about the Honda "quality", so I put my trust in them in the form of a purchase.

From what I have heard, it sounds like Honda might be replacing all of the tires and wheels with standard ones, refunding any monies paid for replacement PAX tires, and including a new spare tire/wheel to keep in the vehicle as part of the settlement. Oh yeah, maybe an additional monetary settlement too. It's all available to view on the 'net.

But that is just what is being thrown around at this point. Nothing is settled yet.

Indy has it right about the solution (mostly) being in drive shaft flex.

Some of it has been fixed by eliminating the different LENGTH left and right, some by different diam. etc. or by going to obviously AWD.

I think I read that even the C6 Corvette (not a front driver) uses different left and right half-shafts (like different diameter or one hollow and one not) to help eliminate hop.

My '05 Ody steering doesn't hunt, just gets a bit heavier under heavy throttle application. Standard Traction control eliminates most of the wheel spin. The temporary heavy steering is worth it when I'm surprising Chevy Impalas off the line.

yeah High hp is fine, but I didn't ever think my Caravan underpowered with 100 less. Really. I mean what's the rush? It's a MINI-VAN.

To some extend D-Rod is right - can't be completely fixed.

Most designs fix the shaft torque problems I describe - more or less. The other areas are much more complex.

The second area of concern is the angle of the half shafts, or more specifically the angle of the universal joints in the half shafts. Because universal joints tend to multiply torque at increasing angles, then a different angle of the joint from right to left would cause a torque differential. Ideally the vehcicle is designed with no angle in the joints - which would reduce torque problems and be the most efficient - however the suspension is constantly making slight changes.

The third area of concern is the contact patch of the tire itself. If the tire contacts off center - either due to a suspension problem or suspension design (more later) or the actual traction situation, then you can actually get a torque differential between the two tire sidewalls themselves. This has indeed been noted on high power cars with runflat tires.

The final area is the design of the steering system. If the steering is designed to optimize the tire contact patch for low torque steer - without getting into the details - then the steering may feel heavy and sluggish. Most car designers want it to feel "lively" and light at low speeds, so they design some camber into the system - which of course adds torque steer and eats tires - but drivers like the feel.

Way too long of an answer.

Thanks for the explanation, very interesting (not too long...at least compared to my posts!).

Is this your polite way of telling me that the problem is worse if there's a big fat guy driving it?

Toyota extended warranty coverage on the door hinge. They've actually been pretty good about extending warranties/recalling defective parts. I just got a notice in the mail that they're replacing rear hatch struts for free as well because some of them have failed prematurely. I haven't had the hinge or the struts fail on ours.

Honda has had some issues with their 5 speed tranny, but it will be awhile before they replace more transmissions than Chrysler has in their minivans.

Thanks for the info Indy. Much Appreciated! Always nice to learn new things!

An even better fix for torque steer - get AWD rather than WWD!

WWD?

W(rong)WD

extending warranty coverage is nice and all e, but not contiuing to build the doors after they knew they had the problem would have been nice.

And yes Chrysler transmissions go bad too, at 70,000 miles. And not all of them. But not at 20k, like nearly all the Hondas did! Sure Chrysler has replaced more transmissions than Honda, cause they have sold approximately 1.5 million more vans than Honda! Relative scales, my friend, scale.

(Kinda like the "death trap" Chevy saddle tank pickups. Sure 8 people died in something like 100 fires, which is tragic. But there were literally 2 million of thos trucks on the roads, so the percentages were tiny tiny slim for a fire. Hence Dateline rigging it)

You mean like the rear suspension in the first generation CTS-Vs that hops horribly under hard accleration and causes rear diff failure? Or the Optispark that failed routinely for years on LT1 Camaros?



It certainly isn't a big enough sample size to be conclusive, but a higher percentage of people I know with Chrysler Corp minivans have had transmission failures than people with Hondas (3/3 for Chrysler vs. 1/3 for Honda). Honda also extended the warranty coverage on their transmissions, which I don't believe Chrysler ever did.

Every carmaker has problems that go on longer than they probably should. Just like corrosion on Bravo IIIs

Well, the failures you mention took years to show up, not months like the Honda trans and Toyota doors.

As long as you realize that every car maker does it. Even Japanese ones. Oh and VP has corrosion issues on their drives too, but nobody talks about it.

As I said to begin with, the Chrysler minivans are the standard bearer of the industry. Everyone wants their vans to be like them in content (and better in powertrain) and styling. VW made a smart move if they really want to try to sell minivans.

I'm surprised VW is even bothering to get into minivans given the sales decline that has been going on for many years in that market segment. Minivans are also inconsistent with VW's "hip" image, which isn't exactly image that minivans have been saddled with. If they wanted to add a bigger people mover type vehicle, I would have expected something more along the lines of the Flex.

VW Transporter
VW Vanagon
Eurovan

I would say that VW has been making vans "hip" for quite some time.