Timing chain, belt or tensioner failure on the 2009 Dodge Challenger
2 crashes 2 of the 6 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 6 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When timing chain, belt or tensioner failure gets reported
There are 6 reports of timing chain, belt or tensioner failure on the 2009 Dodge Challenger, 6 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 120,000 miles. It is the 6th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 70,000 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 2 a crash is mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $1,200–$4,500 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 4 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2010, at a median of 55,000 miles, and latest on the 2012 at 100,000 miles.
By volume the 2010 carries the most reports, with 41; the 2009 has 6. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
I was driving on the highway, traveling at an approximate speed of 65 miles per hour, when all of a sudden the car loses power, and at that point I could no longer accelerate my vehicle. Fortunately, traffic wasn't too bad, so I was able to safely pull over to shoulder without getting rear ended by the cars that were traveling at very high speeds. Soon thereafter, I had my 2009 rt dodge challenger towed to the dealership, apparently, the timing chain broke. It doesn't end there, not only is this vehicle fairly new, but I attempted to fix it already on multiple occasions, but it seems as if nothing helped. Currently my vehicle now has acquired engine damage as a result of the dealership being unable to properly diagnose and address these issues, for lack of knowing what the real issue was all along. In all honesty, I feel as if they need to recall the timing chains on the rt dodge challengers before more people end up in my situation, or worse. *tr
I was driving normal at about 70mph and was exiting highway and the car just died. I pulled over and tried to crank it and nothing. Called a wrecker and they took me to the parts house to get a code checked and it said camshaft position sensor. I bought one and took it home and replaced it and still nothing. You could see that the timing chain had broke through the hole where the sensor went. Over a few weeks I had to replace the timing chain, plastic guide and tensioner (they gave me metal parts as a replacement), hsd to remove the heads and replace all valves because they were bent, had to find and replace broken a valve guide. This was caused from what I was told by the plastic parts wearing out and chrysler is quietly replacing them as people bring them in, I fixed my own and kept receipts and all broken parts. They are also saying it is a harmonic issue with the mds either way I called and made a claim with chrysler and they tried to deny it was common. I have found that it is way more common than are saying and they just don't want to have a recall. I was also yelled at by a manager at freedom dodge when I mentioned this in…
I was driving normal at about 70mph and was exiting highway and the car just died. I pulled over and tried to crank it and nothing. Called a wrecker and they took me to the parts house to get a code checked and it said camshaft position sensor. I bought one and took it home and replaced it and still nothing. You could see that the timing chain had broke through the hole where the sensor went. Over a few weeks I had to replace the timing chain, plastic guide and tensioner (they gave me metal parts as a replacement), hsd to remove the heads and replace all valves because they were bent, had to find and replace broken a valve guide. This was caused from what I was told by the plastic parts wearing out and chrysler is quietly replacing them as people bring them in, I fixed my own and kept receipts and all broken parts. They are also saying it is a harmonic issue with the mds either way I called and made a claim with chrysler and they tried to deny it was common. I have found that it is way more common than are saying and they just don't want to have a recall. I was also yelled at by a manager at freedom dodge when I mentioned this in…
Also reported on the 2009 Dodge Challenger
Other engine problem
Other powertrain problem
Airbag inflator rupture
Other electrical problem
Other speed control problem
Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 6 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 6 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does timing chain, belt or tensioner failure happen on the 2009 Dodge Challenger?
Across 6 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 70,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is timing chain, belt or tensioner failure on the 2009 Dodge Challenger?
6 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed