AtWhatMileage
Electrical · 6 owner reports

Wiring harness or short circuit on the 2011 Dodge Durango

2 fires 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 5 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 6
With an odometer reading 5
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 20%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 2
Typical repair $400–$3,500
What it means when it happens High
Rank among this year's problems 24th

When wiring harness or short circuit gets reported

There are 6 reports of wiring harness or short circuit on the 2011 Dodge Durango, 5 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 24th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 5 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 76,000 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 fire 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 $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 13 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2004, at a median of 10,000 miles, and latest on the 2003 at 85,000 miles.

By volume the 2014 carries the most reports, with 27; the 2011 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.

What owners wrote

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

Tl* the contact owns a 2011 dodge durango. The contact stated that while driving at various speeds, he noticed that the air bag warning indicator was illuminated. The malfunction occurred sporadically. The vehicle was taken to an authorized dealer who advised that the failure was contributed to the air bag wiring harness. The component was ordered and the vehicle was scheduled for repairs when the part had become available. The manufacturer was notified of the problem. The approximate failure mileage was 18,218.

18,218 miles NHTSA complaint 940076 filed 2012-09-18

While driving, the airbag warning light came on. I took the car to papa's dodge in new britain, ct. After investigating for 3 days, they told me a wire in the a-pillar was compromised and that car's airbag system may not operate in the event of a crash. I was given two options for repair. The first was to order a new wiring harness that would put the repair cost close to $800. The second was to have the wires spliced and repaired with no guarantee for $450. I opted for the second option and the repair has held up now for a month. This is an obvious design flaw through no fault of my own that could put my family and I at risk in the event of a crash. These wires are compromised by simply opening and closing the door to enter the vehicle. When I contacted chrysler about reimbursing me for the repair, I was given 4 free oil changes and told there was nothing else they could do.

55,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1262030 filed 2016-02-18

Started out while I was driving down the highway, and that's when my tire pressure warning light came on saying my rear drivers side tire had zero pressure. Pulled over, checked it, and it was still full. So then I called a mechanic and he said it sounded like a bad tire sensor. A few days later my passenger window started to short circuit when trying to roll it up or down while driving. Then yesterday my battery light came on again while driving. All of this would come and go intermediately while driving. Now today, after parking and turning it off, I came out to a completely dead car that burns up battery jumper cables when trying to jump it off another vehicle.

120,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1382716 filed 2017-06-05

Also reported on the 2011 Dodge Durango

Other electrical problem

204 reports median 63k

Alternator or charging system failure

198 reports median 82k

Fuel pump failure

98 reports median 66k

Other engine problem

82 reports median 64k

Other brake problem

53 reports median 69k

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 wiring harness or short circuit happen on the 2011 Dodge Durango?

Across 5 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 75,000 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 2011 Dodge Durango?

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