NHTSA Complaint #11620155 — 2008 CHRYSLER ASPEN

There is a known issue where the transfer case motor will erratically fail causing multiple safety issues. The car is AWD with a 2 speed 4WD selector. The motor can shift into neutral on its own disabling the gear selectors Park function ( it is used when towing the vehicle and disconnects the transmission from the drive train). It happened to me in a parking lot and fortunately it was on level ground or the car could have rolled away when I went into a store. I only discovered what had happened after I started the car and could not get it into forward or reverse. I turned the engine off and put the gear selector in Park, got out and I was able to move the car by pushing, after a Google search indicated it might be in neutral. I found a procedure online to remove the transfer case from neutral and it worked. There is a tiny hidden button on the 4WD selector panel to put the vehicle in neutral for towing and an extremely faint indicator light that come on when it is in towing neutral. The motor has intermittently started shifting in to 4WD and 4WD low on its own and then back to AWD. Again this is a known issue as there are literally hundreds of reports of people having to replace the motor. Also if the 4WD shifts into low at highway speeds it will cause catastrophic transmission failure and loss of vehicle control. Also reports of the system going into towing neutral at highway speeds causing potentially dangerous situations. Again this is not the shift lever neutral but the 4WD transfer case disengaging the entire drivetrain. I have had it shift into 4WD low (which locks all the differentials together and is only for off-road or snow) which made it extremely had to steer because of the lack of the differentials. Moving the selector switch did return the transmission to AWD and I was forced to park the car. It returned to normal after turning the car off and restarting it. This is a very common issue on Chrysler/Dodge vehicle with 4WD options and needs addressing.