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Low Voltage Issue on the 2.0L - Turbo Boost Lag

Philip

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The cause is the big mystery for me... I can only say that it has never happened to me at any of the lower-altitude trails (-10,000 feet) and I do not think it has anything to do with the outdoor temperatures because I've had it happen when the external temp was in the 60's, 70's, and 80's.

Jeep Cares called me back. Apparently the rep was OOTO... so I'll give her a hall pass. I'm going to call the dealership and schedule an appointment and see if they can figure it out. Here's a quick shot of Ruby:
Jeep Wrangler JL Low Voltage Issue on the 2.0L - Turbo Boost Lag 1600122914574

Jeep Wrangler JL Low Voltage Issue on the 2.0L - Turbo Boost Lag 1600123019957
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ColoradoB

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Hi I registered just to contribute to this thread. These situations sound exactly like what happened to me on Sunday. I live in Colorado.

2.0L 2019 Wrangler Rubicon. with 12,000 miles and 35 tires on two inch Mopar life. Was in 4Lo going up a very bumpy trail. Got above 10,000 ft altitude and the vehicle died. I restarted it and a little bit later the low voltage warnings started and systems began to shut down. Voltage dropped into the low 13's then 12's then 11's. Entered limp mode on a shelf road! After turning it off for about 15 minutes I was able to get it to start back up and stabilize at 13.3 volts. I called off the rest of the trip with my friends and headed home. The Jeep acted mostly normal the three hour drive home, staying at 13.3 - 13.5 volts.

The next morning it acted totally normal and started out at 14.1 volts. I have an appointment Friday with the dealer. Any advice on what I should ask the dealer to do? "No problem found / can't reproduce" is going to be infuriating.

Not to be dramatic, but this situation literally put my life at risk on that mountain. Until there is an actual fix, I'm hesitant to do any real off-roading again.
 

Blackjeepjlu

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Hi I registered just to contribute to this thread. These situations sound exactly like what happened to me on Sunday. I live in Colorado.

2.0L 2019 Wrangler Rubicon. with 12,000 miles and 35 tires on two inch Mopar life. Was in 4Lo going up a very bumpy trail. Got above 10,000 ft altitude and the vehicle died. I restarted it and a little bit later the low voltage warnings started and systems began to shut down. Voltage dropped into the low 13's then 12's then 11's. Entered limp mode on a shelf road! After turning it off for about 15 minutes I was able to get it to start back up and stabilize at 13.3 volts. I called off the rest of the trip with my friends and headed home. The Jeep acted mostly normal the three hour drive home, staying at 13.3 - 13.5 volts.

The next morning it acted totally normal and started out at 14.1 volts. I have an appointment Friday with the dealer. Any advice on what I should ask the dealer to do? "No problem found / can't reproduce" is going to be infuriating.

Not to be dramatic, but this situation literally put my life at risk on that mountain. Until there is an actual fix, I'm hesitant to do any real off-roading again.

Totally understand! We had planned on doing Black Bear and Imogene but after it died on us and spent the night on the mountain ( the jeep not us) we opted to just hang around town and not risk any of the bigger trails. Ours is at the dealer now, yesterday it was they thought it was just a battery issue and would be fixed same day, today they're running all kinds of diagnostics on it trying to figure it out. Will keep the thread updated with what we find out.
 

Windshieldfarmer

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Hi I registered just to contribute to this thread. These situations sound exactly like what happened to me on Sunday. I live in Colorado.

2.0L 2019 Wrangler Rubicon. with 12,000 miles and 35 tires on two inch Mopar life. Was in 4Lo going up a very bumpy trail. Got above 10,000 ft altitude and the vehicle died. I restarted it and a little bit later the low voltage warnings started and systems began to shut down. Voltage dropped into the low 13's then 12's then 11's. Entered limp mode on a shelf road! After turning it off for about 15 minutes I was able to get it to start back up and stabilize at 13.3 volts. I called off the rest of the trip with my friends and headed home. The Jeep acted mostly normal the three hour drive home, staying at 13.3 - 13.5 volts.

The next morning it acted totally normal and started out at 14.1 volts. I have an appointment Friday with the dealer. Any advice on what I should ask the dealer to do? "No problem found / can't reproduce" is going to be infuriating.

Not to be dramatic, but this situation literally put my life at risk on that mountain. Until there is an actual fix, I'm hesitant to do any real off-roading again.
Was this your first high altitude off road excursion with this Jeep? I did not have any problems with mine when I was in CO a month ago, but we only did one serious trail above 10,000 feet. For those Who watch this thread who have the 2.0 ETorque it would be interesting to know what % have experienced this problem while wheeling at high altitudes.
 

Zandcwhite

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I don't think it's altitude related. It happened to us on hell's revenge after running fins & things and the majority of hell's. It was 104⁰, ac on, and hours of low range, low rpm, off-roading. The fact that every reported instance I've read has been after hours of low range driving, and each time it appears as though the 48v battery still has plenty of charge (vehicles fire right up and function fine after sitting, regardless of how low the 12v system got), I'm guessing that either the 48v dc to 12v dc converter is undersized/ over heats or the charging system just de-prioritizes the 12v system during insufficient output in order to save the 48v system for starting function. FCA will never admit which it is, as they'd be on the hook for a massive recall. Our jeep has functioned flawlessly at altitudes up to 11,000' before our incident and we ran top of the world the day after without issue. The following day we ran poison spider, golden spike, and gold bar, ~7 hours of low range, low speed, without a problem. I was neuroticaly watching the voltage gauge and would shut off all accessories at 13.4v. We never saw less than 13.2v.
 

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ColoradoB

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Was this your first high altitude off road excursion with this Jeep? I did not have any problems with mine when I was in CO a month ago, but we only did one serious trail above 10,000 feet. For those Who watch this thread who have the 2.0 ETorque it would be interesting to know what % have experienced this problem while wheeling at high altitudes.
I went back and looked at the other trails I've done and they have all been in the 9,000 ft range. That said, this was also the first trail in this Jeep where I was running 4 Lo for long periods of time. So to @Zandcwhite's point it may be more about the load on the system and not the altitude.
 

Blackjeepjlu

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Last year we did trails higher than the one it died on, we had no problems at all until this happened
 

Windshieldfarmer

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The unpredictable nature of the failure is disconcerting. I wonder if the answer might be long breaks every two or three hours. If this is indeed a design defect it’s just a matter of time until we all experience this during a long run in 4lo. This could be incredibly dangerous in some off-roading situations....
 

Philip

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I don't think it's altitude related. It happened to us on hell's revenge after running fins & things and the majority of hell's. It was 104⁰, ac on, and hours of low range, low rpm, off-roading. The fact that every reported instance I've read has been after hours of low range driving, and each time it appears as though the 48v battery still has plenty of charge (vehicles fire right up and function fine after sitting, regardless of how low the 12v system got), I'm guessing that either the 48v dc to 12v dc converter is undersized/ over heats or the charging system just de-prioritizes the 12v system during insufficient output in order to save the 48v system for starting function. FCA will never admit which it is, as they'd be on the hook for a massive recall. Our jeep has functioned flawlessly at altitudes up to 11,000' before our incident and we ran top of the world the day after without issue. The following day we ran poison spider, golden spike, and gold bar, ~7 hours of low range, low speed, without a problem. I was neuroticaly watching the voltage gauge and would shut off all accessories at 13.4v. We never saw less than 13.2v.
I agree with part of your theory. The first time it happened to me, I was only about 2.5 miles into Red Elephant Hill, by Empire Co, so I can say that extended crawling was definitely not at play...

The part I totally agree with is "...I'm guessing that either the 48v dc to 12v dc converter is undersized/ over heats or the charging system just de-prioritizes the 12v system during insufficient output in order to save the 48v system for starting function..." You're spot-on and this is exactly what I think happens... and I've had it happen 3-times!

The first time it happened, I was stuck for 2-hours trying to hunt down an off-road recovery service. After giving up, I tried to restart the jeep before hiking my middle-aged-ass down the mountain... To my complete surprise, the battery charge was back and I was able to limp to the Empire trail before the battery drained again and we died on the trail. Here is the curious thing... I was able to get a jumpstart and my jeep became drivable again. The second and third time this happened to me (which was the following 2 weekends), I came prepared with my mobile jump-starter. On both occasions, I was able to turn off the vehicle WITHOUT the battery getting too low, take a few minutes, and jumpstart back into action. Somehow, jumpstarting the jeep appears to get the charging system to charge again.

Jeep needs to fix this problem, quickly, before more people start hitting the trails with their new JLs. I have visions of people having heart attacks hiking out to find help, death caused because of the electrical failures on the side of a mountain, and offroad recoveries costing thousands of dollars!
 

Philip

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Hi I registered just to contribute to this thread. These situations sound exactly like what happened to me on Sunday. I live in Colorado.

2.0L 2019 Wrangler Rubicon. with 12,000 miles and 35 tires on two inch Mopar life. Was in 4Lo going up a very bumpy trail. Got above 10,000 ft altitude and the vehicle died. I restarted it and a little bit later the low voltage warnings started and systems began to shut down. Voltage dropped into the low 13's then 12's then 11's. Entered limp mode on a shelf road! After turning it off for about 15 minutes I was able to get it to start back up and stabilize at 13.3 volts. I called off the rest of the trip with my friends and headed home. The Jeep acted mostly normal the three hour drive home, staying at 13.3 - 13.5 volts.

The next morning it acted totally normal and started out at 14.1 volts. I have an appointment Friday with the dealer. Any advice on what I should ask the dealer to do? "No problem found / can't reproduce" is going to be infuriating.

Not to be dramatic, but this situation literally put my life at risk on that mountain. Until there is an actual fix, I'm hesitant to do any real off-roading again.
Yea, my wife doesn't want to go anymore... she claims PTSD. I am going to hit Red Cone again, this weekend, so I am going to schedule my next service appointment, for Monday.

Want to roll with us so we can compare notes at the top of Red Cone (12,800 feet)? I'm going on Saturday and its better to jeep in pairs!
 

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JLU138

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Hi I registered just to contribute to this thread. These situations sound exactly like what happened to me on Sunday. I live in Colorado.

2.0L 2019 Wrangler Rubicon. with 12,000 miles and 35 tires on two inch Mopar life. Was in 4Lo going up a very bumpy trail. Got above 10,000 ft altitude and the vehicle died. I restarted it and a little bit later the low voltage warnings started and systems began to shut down. Voltage dropped into the low 13's then 12's then 11's. Entered limp mode on a shelf road! After turning it off for about 15 minutes I was able to get it to start back up and stabilize at 13.3 volts. I called off the rest of the trip with my friends and headed home. The Jeep acted mostly normal the three hour drive home, staying at 13.3 - 13.5 volts.

The next morning it acted totally normal and started out at 14.1 volts. I have an appointment Friday with the dealer. Any advice on what I should ask the dealer to do? "No problem found / can't reproduce" is going to be infuriating.

Not to be dramatic, but this situation literally put my life at risk on that mountain. Until there is an actual fix, I'm hesitant to do any real off-roading again.
 

JLU138

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I hate to say my man, but as somebody who has been dealing with this for over a year, and has discussed this same issue with a couple other people, I’m afraid the response we all get from the dealership is “can’t reproduce, no problem found”. If you get it in there quick enough the codes will be stored, but in my experience if everything is functioning properly as they drive it down a paved road in 2 high, they won’t be able to do anything.
I take mine to AutoNation West.
 

DexterJeeper

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Been away from this thread for a while and was hoping to come back to some better news but I'm sad to see things have not changed a single bit. Just to add another data point. I went snow wheeling earlier this year in Northern Michigan (Snoblind 2020). And I ran into the same issues I saw at a high altitude in Colorado last year. So my original assumption of this issue occurring at high altitude, slow crawling in 4L was not consistent with what I saw. Being in Michigan, I'm guessing my altitude was no higher than 1,000ft above sea level. I was also running the trails in 4H the whole day. I had to rev my engine quite often to get up the big hills. The only consistent thing was length of time the engine was running--the entire day.

What I did try this time was to turn the Jeep off completely as soon as the error showed up. Once I restarted, everything went back to normal. It almost felt like a computer program was reset and the system started recharging the 12V batt again. Of course that was just a single event so I can't really say whether that will work again.

One other strange behavior I did notice is if I just sat there in park and let the engine idle for a while, the low voltage warning can also pop up. I'm talking 30min to an hour. I was able to replicate this a few times. And of course, all the warnings went away once I shut off and restarted the engine. Has anyone else seen this?

Jeep Wrangler JL Low Voltage Issue on the 2.0L - Turbo Boost Lag IMG_20200214_204011


Jeep Wrangler JL Low Voltage Issue on the 2.0L - Turbo Boost Lag IMG_20200214_204044


Video of the fault
 

AnnDee4444

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The only consistent thing was length of time the engine was running--the entire day.
I think you might be onto something here...

While I have not had the low voltage issue (yet), I have noticed lower voltage towards the end of the day vs. earlier. Typically mine will settle at 14.0 or 14.1, but after an entire days worth of driving & starting/stopping the voltage will drop down to around 13.7.
 

ColoradoB

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I think you might be onto something here...

While I have not had the low voltage issue (yet), I have noticed lower voltage towards the end of the day vs. earlier. Typically mine will settle at 14.0 or 14.1, but after an entire days worth of driving & starting/stopping the voltage will drop down to around 13.7.

Now that you mention it, I had been on a trail in 4 Lo all morning as well. We immediately headed over to our next adventure as we went up above 10,000 feet. We did stop for lunch for about 20 minutes, but that clearly wasn't enough time as my vehicle experienced it's problems about 20-30 minutes after that break.
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