Welcome to kj country! and congrats as a new CRD owner, ive had mine since April now. I must first say i love it, it totaly pwns w/ its 300lb-ft of torque out on the trail! But.... consider this friendly advice if your not aware:
This vehilce is wonderful, but im convince DC never quite finished the fine deails and left it up to us "enthusiasts" to figure out ourselves. You may ore may not know all this so if you do, sorry to bother u, but if not this info may keep u from having to call a tow truck one day, or better still, keep u from breaking down somewhere where u could die.
common problems:
1) fuel filter housing (where the inline heater element is) over heats and melts the housing causing a small air leak, so every once and a while if it sits a while, it draws in too much air, and the CRD will stall, you can just bleed the air out and carry on. My solution is change out the whole asembly when changing fuel filter mopar part cost 175.00 easy to do. cost a bit high tho If you live somewhere hot, just unplug the inline heater, so it wont be a problem
2)every so often you will be driving along at about 63-68mph in top gear, the vehicle trys to down shift but skips one gear and goes 5th to 3rd, makes a kachunk noise and then finds a gear and thats it. Suncost has a Torque converter upgrade that seems to drasticly improve auto ****** performance for this and other ****** related issues (DC auto trannys are all torque flites based on the original desgin in 1956, w/ a 2 speed over under inside the ******)
3)EGR solinoid fails often throwing a CEL usualy P1140, Only way to not have to fix it all the time is to disable it somehow, tho, i havent heard a goode idea for this yet, there are MANY MANY hacks to date. Some think w/ the advent of ULSD it will all go away......
4)when your in 4wheel low shifting the auto ****** from D Drive to R reverse is quite clunky there is a little plastic clip holding the transmision linkage together under the beast just forward of the auto ******, i shifted from D to R one to many times and it snaped and shifting was impossible w/ out climing under the vehilce and pulling on the wire. the replacement part DC gave me was made of thicker plastic w/ metal re-enforment, even though they said there was no recall, if yours isnt the metal one, i would sugggest re-enforcing it, or being careful shifting in 4WL
There are a few other people out there w/ complaints but these are all the things that have happend to me. So far.
Suggestions:
1) I would suggest getting a code scanner to watch your engine more carfully, the Scan Gauge III is good, but it often crashes in use b/c of DC's wonderful integration effort w/ the itallian motroti engine.
2) keep a took box in your CRD always =D
3) there is a thing called an ORM or off road mod out there that disables your EGR but i think it made my EGR clogg up and go bad, extra soot baking against the throttle plate. So if you decide to do the ORM BEWARE! =)
4) Provent CCV filter is prolly a good idea, but i havent done it yet, it prevents the engines Crank case venting from belching oil all over your turbo, intercooler, and intake
