Wiring harness or short circuit on the 2012 Dodge Challenger
1 crash 1 fire 2 of the 9 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 7 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 wiring harness or short circuit gets reported
There are 9 reports of wiring harness or short circuit on the 2012 Dodge Challenger, 7 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 88,000 miles. It is the 6th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 4,200 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, 1 a crash and 1 a fire are 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 $400–$3,500 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.
The same failure, every year of the Dodge Challenger
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 rearended, (at 4200 miles on my new vehicle), while at a dead stop for a traffic light by a ford f250 pickup truck traveling at 45 MPH pulling a utility trailer hauling approximately 6000 - 7000 pounds which hit my 2012 dodge challenger in the right rearend pushing me into the back end of a nissan altima, and not one of the air bags deployed in my challenger. I had a prior problem with the challenger at approximately 2300 miles on the vehicle where the air bag warning light came on and had the vehicle serviced at the dealer to fix the problem they said was a faulty wiring harness from the factory in the drivers seat for the air bag system, and after the dealer replaced said faulty wiring harness it turned the warning light off prior to this accident. The accident occurred at 4200 miles on my vehicle causing extensive damage to the rear and major damage to the front of the vehicle from the impact. Again not one of the air bags deployed. The dealer service department also stated to me when I had the vehicle in for repair of the warning light prior to the accident that they were having this problem with all of these new…
Tl* the contact owns a 2012 dodge challenger. The contact was driving approximately 65 MPH and noticed that the high beam headlights would not illuminate. In addition, the passenger side headlight would not illuminate when using the low beam headlights. The vehicle was taken to the dealer for diagnostic testing. The technician advised the contact that the wiring harness would have to be replaced because it had been chewed through by a rodent. The contact stated that the rodents were able to access the wiring harness because it is not equipped with a flexible plastic conduit, such as other model vehicles. The vehicle was not repaired. The approximate failure mileage was 900. ...updated 02-07-13 *bf updated 02/14/2013 *js
Cruise control would not work, airbag lights coming on multiple times . Taken to dealer / shop for repair . Cruise control works now. Still problems with airbag lights coming on at different times and different rates of speed. Has been to dealer multiple times (at least 4 times) for airbag is sues. Dealer has had seats out of car etc. To repair / replace "airbag sensor" / "wiring harness", . Airbag light still coming on when it shouldn't. Just really concern with this issue that could turn out to cause a fatality.vehicle mileage is at 13,150. *tr
Also reported on the 2012 Dodge Challenger
Other electrical problem
Alternator or charging system failure
Airbag inflator rupture
Other powertrain problem
No-start or intermittent start failure
Other engine problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 9 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 9 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 wiring harness or short circuit happen on the 2012 Dodge Challenger?
Across 7 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 5,000 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 wiring harness or short circuit on the 2012 Dodge Challenger?
9 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