AtWhatMileage
Engine · 39 owner reports

Stalling while driving on the 2004 Dodge Durango

1 crash 2 fires 3 of the 39 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.

Reports of this failure 39
With an odometer reading 36
Reports per 1,000 built 0.4 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 25%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 3
Typical repair $300–$2,500
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 9th

When stalling while driving gets reported

Owners of the 2004 Dodge Durango report stalling while driving at a median of 77,500 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 42,500 miles and a quarter after 112,500 miles, from 36 reports that carried an odometer reading.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 75,000 miles. It is the 9th most-reported problem on this model year.

The mileage distribution

The reported range runs from 10,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 122,500 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 112,781 miles across the middle 80% of reports.

A spread this wide points at use rather than design. Towing, climate, service history and city mileage all move a failure like this, so the median is a weak guide to any individual car.

25% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 36 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
10,000 miles 42,503 miles 78,000 miles 112,750 miles 122,781 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 2 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 $300–$2,500 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 13 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2016, at a median of 20 miles, and latest on the 2000 at 135,000 miles.

By volume the 2005 carries the most reports, with 62; the 2004 has 39. 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.

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

Since purchasing dodge durango 2004 hemi 5.7 in februrary 2004 an engine stalled 3 times without any reason. All times it happened after a complete stop at stop light or in a parking lot. The only way to restart an engine was to turn off a key, wait a little bit and start an engine once again. Dealer (westgate dodge in raleigh, nc) made an investigation and didn't find anything wrong. The only thing what he did was to flash PCM, which leads to reducing an engine power and decreasing a fuel economy. I don't feel safe because this may happen somewhere in a middle of a road, which may lead to an incident and/or crash.

10,000 miles NHTSA complaint 544854 filed 2005-07-19

Dt: vehicle has random shut off while driving at all speeds. The dealer checked the vehicle multiple times. They claimed the computer could not find the cause of the problem. . This started happening about 2 months after it was purchased. Around oct 1, 2004. *ak

10,000 miles NHTSA complaint 544903 filed 2005-07-19

Approaching a left turn, while braking, the engine stalled. Approximate speed at the time of failure was 15 MPH. Had to make a difficult left turn against oncoming traffic without power steering, causing the vehicle to strike a curb. No damage was done to the vehicle or injuries to the occupants. Put vehicle in park and restarted the engine. Vehicle seemed fine after that. *nm

20,700 miles NHTSA complaint 555618 filed 2005-09-23

Also reported on the 2004 Dodge Durango

Other engine problem

385 reports median 102k

Other electrical problem

128 reports median 61k

Complete engine failure or seizure

59 reports median 120k

Other powertrain problem

56 reports median 100k

Instrument cluster or gauge failure

41 reports median 61k

How far this goes

Complaints are voluntary, so 39 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 stalling while driving happen on the 2004 Dodge Durango?

Across 36 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 77,500 miles. A quarter were filed before 42,500 miles and a quarter after 112,500 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is stalling while driving on the 2004 Dodge Durango?

39 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.4 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