Hey, friends. It's Len here from 1A Auto. Today in the studio, we have a 3rd Generation
Chrysler Sebring. I wanted to go over some of the top problems
that we've come to find, so let's get started. Now, for our first problem, we're going to
talk about throttle body issues. The location of your throttle body on your
car, if you were to go ahead and find your airbox right here and follow the air inlet
tube, you're going to be able to find your electronic throttle body.
Now, the job of your electronic throttle body
is to regulate the amount of air that's getting drawn into your engine so it can mix with
the proper amount of fuel so it can get burnt up in your combustion chamber. If for some reason your electronic throttle
body has an issue, well, you might find that you have a runnability issue. You might find a little misfire, poor acceleration,
or even poor fuel economy. A couple common reasons why this might potentially
happen is, well, if you were to go ahead and take off that neck and take a peak at the
throttle body, you might see that it's full of dirt or debris.
A lot of this black stuff right here is considered
carbon. If I was to take it off and then remove it
and look at the backside, you might see something that looks a little bit more like this. Now, if your throttle body looks like this
one right here, obviously, that's going to be something that you're going to want to
take care of. A little bit of carbon or even build-up on
your throttle body isn't too bad, but if it looks like this one right here, it either
needs to be cleaned or even replaced.
Something that I want to mention to you real
quick. If you do have to clean your throttle body,
you definitely don't want to push on this black right inside here. The reason for that is because inside of your
electronic throttle body, you're going to have some gearing, and, of course, an electronic
motor. If it comes out of calibration because you're
pushing on it like I am, like a maniac, you could potentially have other running issues.
Now, for our second problem, we're going to
talk about wheel bearings. Of course, every wheel on your car is going
to have a wheel bearing. The wheel bearings in the front are the ones
we're going to talk about for this problem. Now, these wheel bearings are going to be
sealed wheel bearings. Essentially, what that means is there shouldn't
be any way for moisture to make their way inside. Unfortunately, what can happen is, of course,
as these things are spinning, they're going to wear out over time and the seal that's
inside there could potentially wear out as well.
If moisture or debris makes its way inside
of the wheel bearing, you're going to find an issue. Some of the symptoms that you might happen
to find if you're having an issue with your wheel bearing might potentially be a humming
noise coming from the front of your car. You might happen to notice as you tend to
accelerate, or if you're making a turn, the noise either goes away or even gets louder. If you happen to find when you're driving
in your car you have a humming noise coming from the front end of your car and you happen
to be turning left and it gets a little louder, typically, that's going to mean that you're
having an issue with your right front wheel bearing and vice versa if you're turning in
the opposite direction.
Other than that, you might happen to notice
that you have an ABS light that comes on on your dash. If you would go ahead and pull that ABS light,
it might give you a code saying that you're having an issue with one of your wheel bearings. This little wire right here is, of course,
your ABS wire. Some other things that you might happen to
notice is maybe if you happen to jack up the front of your car and you want to check your
front end, nobody really does that, unless, of course, they feel as though they're having
an issue, you might happen to feel that you got a little [vocalization] coming from your
wheel or even [vocalization] side-to-side. If that's the case, you want to, of course,
inspect everything. Make sure you don't have an issue with your
ball joints or your tie rods. If you still had movement and those look good,
more than likely, it's the wheel bearing.
If you find that you're having an issue with
one of your bearings or even multiple bearings, the only thing that you can really do for
this is go ahead and replace it. These are non-adjustable. They're sealed wheel bearings. And if you're going to be replacing any front-end
parts, go ahead and make sure that you get yourself a four-wheel alignment afterward.
Now, for our third problem, we're going to
talk about condensation drain issues from your AC system. Something that you might happen to notice
if you're having this issue is after you've been running your AC for a while or even your
defrost for a little while, you kind of get this little bit of a musty smell coming through
your vents. You might also happen to notice in a more
severe case a little puddle of water on your passenger side floor. Why would that be? Well, because every time you're running your
air conditioner or even your defrost, your AC condenser is going to be building up condensation
and that needs to drain someplace. There's going to be a little drain tube that's
going to come from behind your dash and it's going to lead down and underneath the car,
so basically, the moisture that's going to come out is going to go ahead and evacuate
down to the ground. Now, what can commonly happen with this, of
course, might be something gets stuck inside of that tube, possibly some sort of debris
such as maybe pine needles or anything alike.
If that happens and it restricts water from
making its way out, it's going to puddle up inside of your dash and, of course, it's going
to have to go someplace at some point. If you find that you're having this issue,
whether it's the musty smell coming from your vents or even the big puddle on the floor
inside your car, that's something that you're going to want to take care of ASAP. Any time moisture is sitting still in any
place, of course, it's going to build up bacteria. That's probably where that smell is coming
from, really.
So, if you're having this issue, go ahead
and get underneath your car. You're going to want to find that drain tube. It's going to be on the passenger side front
of your car, kind of like underneath the dash right about here Next thing you're going to want to do is take
a little bit of compressed air if you happen to have some, or even maybe if you're careful
enough, try to use a little bit of a coat hanger or something that you can slide up
inside there, very carefully, and try to remove any debris or obstruction that might be inside
that tube. Once you go ahead and get that out, you might
even notice a little rush of water come flying right out, and that's, of course, going to
drain out all that condensation that was inside the box.
After that, the next thing you need to do
is go ahead and try to get out any of the remaining moisture that's inside there. So, of course, like I said, you're going to
have that moisture that's been sitting in there. It's going to be building up bacteria, so
you're going to want to take care of that. You can go ahead and try to get some kind
of antibacterial spray. Spray it inside of your vents.
Maybe get something that's nice and lemony
fresh. It might smell nice while you're sitting in
your passenger compartment. All right. So that's perfect. Do you hear that? That's incredible. I don't even have the key in the ignition. I've got a thumping noise coming from the
inside of my dash while I don't even have the key inside the car. This comes down to a blend door actuator. Now, why might you have a thumping noise coming
from behind your dash? Well, behind your dash, you're going to have
a whole bunch of different tunnels and vents that lead to different areas, whether it's
the vents in the dash or whether it's maybe your defrost or even the floorboard.
All these little tunnels need to be diverted
by things, and that's going to be done by blend doors. So essentially, if you want the air to come
out of your vents, it's going to make sure that it blocks off the other areas so only
the air comes out of your vents. That little door needs to be actuated by something. And this is going to be very important. It's going to be actuated by an actuator. Typically, what can happen with these is the
actuators being an electronic component can typically go bad.
When that happens, you might happen to notice
a thumping noise, a clunking noise, or maybe you might even happen to notice as you're
changing things around either the temperature doesn't seem like it wants to work right or
maybe even you happen to notice that when you go ahead and turn this it doesn't go from
the vents on the dash up to the windshield the way that you asked it to. A common reason why this might happen, like
I said, is because of the blend door actuators. But if you're having the same issue like I
am with this key being out of the ignition and still hearing that clunking noise, sometimes
what that can come down to is the actuator that's for the recirculation on this. So if you were to go ahead and push the recirculation
button while the car is on, it's going to recirculate the air back around inside your
passenger compartment.
After you turn off your car, the recirculation
actuator is supposed to go ahead and close that door to make sure that no outside air
is making its way in while your car is sitting parked with nobody in it. Well, of course, if that actuator wasn't functioning
properly and maybe it's getting bound up or it's having an issue internally, well, it's
going to keep trying to go ahead and close that door to make sure that that's nice and
shut so no outside air is making its way in. It's going to keep trying this, so even while
the key is out, it's going to try to shut that. So every once in a while, you might not even
be sitting in the car, you could be outside with no key in it, and you might even hear
a thumping coming from your car while you're just walking by it.
Now, I know you're going to want a fix for
this one. What I would do for this, of course, is to
diagnose which blend door actuator has an issue. So I'll come right over to my switches with,
of course, the key in the on position, and I want to see if it happens when I go ahead
and use the recirculate. If it sounds like the recirculate or actuator
is the issue, well, then that leads me to where I'm going to go ahead and replace. If you're having an issue with the actuator,
more that likely you're just going to have to replace it.
Now, for our fifth problem, we're going to
talk about an occupant restraint control module. For this car right here, it's going to be
located behind this area on the passenger side. Now, this control module is going to be very
important for the safety of all the passengers inside of your car. So it's not necessarily something that, well,
any of us should really be messing with, unless, of course, we're qualified. The reason why I say that you want to be qualified
to be able to work on something like this, of course, like I said, it has to do with
the safety of all the passengers inside of your passenger compartment. If, of course, you were to go ahead and mess
around a little bit and you try touching something together, make a little spark or anything
like that, or…problem number four again. Make a little spark or an arc or anything
like that, and you could potentially set off the airbags inside your passenger compartment. Now, if something like that was to happen
and you had your face very close to the dash or anything like that because you're working
near it, well, you can imagine what might happen.
You don't want an airbag going off in your
face when you're not expecting it right up against you like this. Airbag systems are expensive to replace and
service too. If you end up deploying your airbags, well,
of course, it's going to be very costly in the long-run. If you're having an issue with this module,
the symptom that you might happen to find would probably just be an airbag light on
your dash. You go ahead and you pull that code, it might
tell you that you're having an issue with the airbag system or even the module directly. Aside from that, you're probably not going
to notice anything else, unless, of course, you got into an accident, which isn't really
going to be the best time to realize that you have an issue.
Now, what could go wrong with this control
module? Of course, it's an electronic component. Electronic components typically go bad. If moisture makes its way inside of the casing,
it's going to get on the circuit board and even along any of the diodes or electrical
components inside. If you get a short, of course, you're going
to have an airbag light and you're going to have an issue with the airbag system. If this was to happen, of course, you're going
to have an airbag light and, more than likely, you're going to have an issue with the communication
with your seat belt pre-tensioners. So, of course, on your seat belts, if you
were to go ahead and tug on these like as if maybe you're in an incident or you had
to stop really fast, these are supposed to lock in. That's your pre-tensioner. If it doesn't lock or it doesn't communicate
with your control module, you're going to have an issue.
And it couldn't hurt to check all your pre-tensioners
too. Okay. So, let's talk about a fix for this. Of course, this is something that's very delicate,
like I said, and you want to have a professional deal with it. Luckily for you, there's a recall on this. So, all you got to do, call up your local
dealer, talk to them for a little bit, give them your VIN number, which is the vehicle
identification number, and they're going to let you know if that's going to be covered
to be fixed by the manufacturer.
Okay, friends so that's what I've got for
you for some of the top problems that we've come to find on a 3rd Generation Chrysler
Sebring. Maybe you have one of these cars or a car
of your own with problems of its own. If you do and you want to talk about it, leave
it in the comments section below because I always love to hear from you. Of course, if you liked the video or maybe
you learned a little something, smash on the like button for me, it would mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe,
ring the bell, and, of course, click the share button. And that way there, you and all of your friends
can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks..