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Other · 23 owner reports

Unclassified problem on the 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan

1 crash 2 injuries 3 of the 23 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 14 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 23
With an odometer reading 14
Reports per 1,000 built 0.4 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 43%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 3
Typical repair —
What it means when it happens Moderate
Rank among this year's problems 58th

When unclassified problem gets reported

Owners of the 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan report unclassified problem at a median of 45,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 20,000 miles and a quarter after 125,000 miles, from 14 reports that carried an odometer reading.

It is the 58th most-reported problem on this model year.

The mileage distribution

The reported range runs from 10,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 150,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 139,202 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.

43% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 14 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
11,938 miles 18,000 miles 45,572 miles 126,500 miles 151,140 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 an injury 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.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 25 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2020, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2004 at 220,000 miles.

By volume the 2008 carries the most reports, with 284; the 2002 has 23. 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.

My wife was driving the 2002 dodge grand caravan sport down the street and turned right to go to work. All of a sudden both air bags deployed and shut the engine down. She didn't hit anything. They just deployed on there own. That was frightening, but just lucky she wasn't on the highway when it happened.*ak

15,000 miles NHTSA complaint 445312 filed 2003-12-15

My wife was driving the 2002 dodge grand caravan sport down the street and turned right to go to work. All of a sudden both air bags deployed and shut the engine down. She didn't hit anything. They just deployed on there own. That was frightening, but just lucky she wasn't on the highway when it happened.*ak

15,000 miles NHTSA complaint 445314 filed 2003-12-15

The problem I am having is that the gas mileage is way off. I am only 12 miles to a gallon and should get aleast 18. I have had in for repairs numerous times and on some occassions they will replace a sensor or a hose.within a couple of weeks it is back to the same old problem again. Sometimes they say they can find no problem. What do I do?

10,625 miles NHTSA complaint 471706 filed 2004-04-22

Also reported on the 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan

Other steering problem

29 reports median 32k

Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure

27 reports median 47k

Other body or interior problem

25 reports median 78k

Other powertrain problem

19 reports median 59k

Other electrical problem

18 reports median 96k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 23 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 23 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 unclassified problem happen on the 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan?

Across 14 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 45,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 20,000 miles and a quarter after 125,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is unclassified problem on the 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan?

23 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