AtWhatMileage
Cooling · 7 owner reports

Overheating on the 2013 Dodge Charger

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.

Reports of this failure 7
With an odometer reading 7
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 14%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $400–$3,500
What it means when it happens High
Rank among this year's problems 12th

When overheating gets reported

There are 7 reports of overheating on the 2013 Dodge Charger, 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 102,000 miles. It is the 12th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 7 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 60,000 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

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 on other years

The same failure is reported on 7 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2007, at a median of 45,000 miles, and latest on the 2006 at 110,000 miles.

By volume the 2011 carries the most reports, with 31; the 2013 has 7. 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.

Median
  1. 2006 Dodge Charger overheating 108k
  2. 2007 Dodge Charger overheating 45k
  3. 2008 Dodge Charger overheating 80k
  4. 2011 Dodge Charger overheating 58k
  5. 2012 Dodge Charger overheating 48k
  6. 2013 (this one) 60k
  7. 2014 Dodge Charger overheating
    no odometer readings given
    —
  8. 2015 Dodge Charger overheating 29k
  9. 2016 Dodge Charger overheating
    no odometer readings given
    —
  10. 2017 Dodge Charger overheating 103k
  11. 2020 Dodge Charger overheating
    no odometer readings given
    —
  12. 2021 Dodge Charger overheating
    no odometer readings given
    —

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.

Vehicle will state "battery saver mode" and start a high pitched whirring nose. At this point the alternator will either get stuck or short and will begin to overheat followed by a drained batter and stalling of the car. In my instance I had been driving the car on a city street when the message stating "battery saver mode" turned on then started turning off and on the radio, signaling low battery, ABS active with them turning on an off before the high pitched sound began from the engine. I drove 2 blocks to my job parked and smoke billowed from under the hood directly from the alternator. I turned off the car and allowed it the smoking to stop. Once it was off I noticed all power in the car was drained and it would not turn on in any way or even open the trunk. It was towed to a mechanic who confirmed an issue with the alternator and had to replace it with a 180amp alternator to solve the issue.

28,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1302679 filed 2016-07-28

Hello my 2013 dodge charger 3.6 while I was driving the vehicle has just shut down with no warnings and I had to get it towed to a dodge shop u waited on my vehicle for days and they said it was a blown fuse but I'm in the technology field and it seems to me that someone has access or remotely access to my vehicle now I have issues with my fuel which I'm getting 10 miles a gallon, and my vehicle is getting to a point to wear I have to pull over because it's getting overheated something is seriously wrong and I feel unsafe anytime your vehicle shuts off where you don't have control of it it's a hazard to everyone my uconnect radio ask for a anti theft code but it was before I took it to auto nation dodge it really needs to be looked at I've parked the vehicle it has 67000 miles and I just bought it in october of last year also the windows roll down by there selfs the vehicle was going about 45 MPH on city hwy and the dealership never had it smoked before they sold it to me

67,545 miles NHTSA complaint 1397745 filed 2017-08-05

Hello my 2013 dodge charger 3.6 while I was driving the vehicle has just shut down with no warnings and I had to get it towed to a dodge shop u waited on my vehicle for days and they said it was a blown fuse but I'm in the technology field and it seems to me that someone has access or remotely access to my vehicle now I have issues with my fuel which I'm getting 10 miles a gallon, and my vehicle is getting to a point to wear I have to pull over because it's getting overheated something is seriously wrong and I feel unsafe anytime your vehicle shuts off where you don't have control of it it's a hazard to everyone my uconnect radio ask for a anti theft code but it was before I took it to auto nation dodge it really needs to be looked at I've parked the vehicle it has 67000 miles and I just bought it in october of last year also the windows roll down by there selfs the vehicle was going about 45 MPH on city hwy and the dealership never had it smoked before they sold it to me

67,545 miles NHTSA complaint 1397746 filed 2017-08-05

Also reported on the 2013 Dodge Charger

Alternator or charging system failure

116 reports median 56k

Other electrical problem

65 reports median 57k

Other powertrain problem

26 reports median 50k

Other engine problem

25 reports median 60k

Other steering problem

15 reports median 66k

Other speed control problem

15 reports median 55k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 7 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 7 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 overheating happen on the 2013 Dodge Charger?

Across 7 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 60,000 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 overheating on the 2013 Dodge Charger?

7 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