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My 2020 Jeep Rubicon “JLUR” could have killed me and my family this weekend.

NorCA

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The latest update on my 2019 JLUR that went into the remote Jeep dealership for the same type of issues on 11/17 is yet a longer wait. According to the service manager, they are waiting for parts (again), with a latest estimate of 12/23.

The remote dealership is not being forthcoming with details. The service manager is not providing the same type of information or connecting me with the service technician to hear what may have been attempted or still faulting.

I have no idea if the remote dealership is in touch with backline engineers and doubt if FCA field technicians are planning to inspect and bless everything.

I am completely frustrated with limited options.
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Fsttanks

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The latest update on my 2019 JLUR that went into the remote Jeep dealership for the same type of issues on 11/17 is yet a longer wait. According to the service manager, they are waiting for parts (again), with a latest estimate of 12/23.

The remote dealership is not being forthcoming with details. The service manager is not providing the same type of information or connecting me with the service technician to hear what may have been attempted or still faulting.

I have no idea if the remote dealership is in touch with backline engineers and doubt if FCA field technicians are planning to inspect and bless everything.

I am completely frustrated with limited options.
Its a bigger problem then we all know and one Jeep has no idea how to solve. At least a dozen other people( from this forum and others) have contacted me with their stories of similar failures and repeated dealerships visits.

Generally speaking, statics show only 1 out of 5 people with problems every post about them. So for everyone of us with these electrical issues there are at least five other with the same issues that we never hear about.
 

TheGreatCO

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If FCA will pay for my time, I'll hook up my logic analyzer and oscilloscope and spend some time on your Jeep. Sounds like you have pretty reproducible problems, which is usually an engineer's dream compared to the nightmare of one off issues.
 

Nolocke

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This is a STRONG WARNING to all Jeep JL owners!
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The following is a short summarization of the event, some details have been left out and will be discussed with Jeep before I add them.

This weekend while taking a short family trip in our five month old 2020 Jeep JLUR we had TWO COMPLETE computer failures both without ANY warning.

The first was at a busy intersection the engine shut down and ALL the instruments and infotainment system went crazy included the SOS which started sending alerts that could not be stopped. I had NO ability to activate the hazards lights to warn other vehicles behind me or any ability to restart the engine. Twice we were almost rear ended so when it was safe enough I had my family exit to safety. My Jeep remained immobile in the intersection for almost 10 mins. At which point the computer system reset and I was able to move the Jeep to a safe location. After the incident there were no engine warning light of any kind and all the system were back to work as normal.

Thinking this was a one off glitch we continued on our trip. Well that was a huge mistake. Not much more then 10 min later while driving at freeway speeds there was another COMPLETE computer failure and total loss of ALL vehicle control. The steering all but froze up, engine was sputtering and loosing power worst the brakes were NOT working! All this on top of the other instruments going crazy. I managed with some effort to muscle the steering wheel enough to get the Jeep over to the extremely small “emergency lane” but then had NO brakes to stop with and our speed at this time was around 50mph. I was literally standing on the brake pedal and it was having almost no effect. I ended up having to use the “E” brake to stop our Jeep!

Once stopped, again NO “hazard lights” could be engaged and NOTHING worked! So now we were half in and half out of the traffic lanes. I carry flares and being this had just happen a few minutes early I was thinking about them so I deployed them to warn traffic and hopefully not get rear ended by a high speed passerby.

15 or so minutes later the computer system once again reset? I was then able to move the Jeep off the freeway. This time the “check engine” light was on. Seeing this I though REALLY NO F’N KIDDING.

Needless to say Jeep had a call from me and I have filed a report with the NTSB. Had either one of these incident occurred just a short time early as we had driven through a high speed (70mph) section of winding mountain roads I would not have been able to steer or brake sufficiently enough to have avoided a major crash. Fortunately I am a trained EVOC driver with decades of high speed and off-road skills to draw from. Had my wife or son or anyone with far less experience “behind the wheel” been driving when the last incident happen there is no way they could have safety made it off to the side of the road. Hell I was shaking and almost S**T my pants. I have had failure of steering and brakes before while on the job in other vehicles, but NEVER all the major systems at the same time let alone while at 70mph.

In more then 35 years of drive both personally and as a professional I have never been scared of driving a vehicle until today. I will never trust my JLUR again until Jeep can 100% in writing guarantee me this will NEVER happen again!!!

I don’t think the majority of JL owner actually realizes just how much of their Jeep is controlled solely by the one computer with no backup and that they have no real control over their vehicles except which the computer grants them. So be aware if your computer fails you are just along for the ride. And it’s a scary one!!!

P.S. Yes I am aware there have been other threads on similar topics. But none state the real danger involved. The Jeep was towed to my local dealerships where it will sit until ?. It is not a battery issue as both show full charges and voltage.

Your thoughts and constructive input are welcome.

HUGE UPDATE come soon and it’s not a good one!!!

EDIT NOTE:
1) This JLUR is a standard 3.6 with automatic transmission.
2) The ESS was turned off via the dash off button in both incidents. Always turn it off when I start the Jeep.
3) The tires are 315/70/17 BFG AT2.
4) NO computer “chip” mods were done.
5) The infotainment system is the Alpine with 8.4 screen.

UPDATE 11/27

Second dealership provided me with a copy of the OBD print out. The service writer said it was by far the longest print out of problems they has seen on a JL or JT. Nearly all the electrically powered/controlled system have failed or show faults!!
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UPDATE 11/30
Simplified version:
Dealerships said “infotainment” system and alternator were damaged during the events making it impossible to sort through ALL the failures and faults.
Both will need to be replaced before they can even start tracking down the cause of the issues.

This will be at least a TWO WEEK process because there are no “off the shelf” replacement 8.4 Alpine information system available as these are “coded to the VIN” of each vehicle.

UPDATE 12/03

Spoke with Jeep Cares today and the ordered parts that were supposed to arrive on 12/12 will now not arrive until at least 12/21 !!

Also spoke with the dealership doing the work and they said they moved ahead with replacing the alternator and just for good measure both batteries. Upon doing so they discovered the infotainment system was now working(?) and could do further investigations into the electrical system failures and that I might not need a new infotainment system after all.

UPDATE 12/04

Well surprise the Jeep is “fixed” 😆 LOL time will tell though.

Ok here is a summarization of what I have been told the issues were (?) in no specific order because they don’t actually know the sequence of the failures.

1) Nearly all the fuses were tight and initially felt seated, but it was found they were only seated about 60% and needed to be pressed further into proper position. This could have caused some shorting and possibly limited surge protections.

2) The almost $600 “smart” alternator aka “generator/inverter” had the smart part burn up and was working solely as an old fashion alternator without the inverter aspect to “balance out the electrical power frequencies” which in turn upset the electronics.

3) The ESS relays were malfunctioning aka “burned out” and the ESS did not know what to do, hence why the engine would shut down and not want to restart or would not turn off. It did not matter that the ESS off button was engaged in fact it “might” have made the situation worst with it selected to the OFF setting. Just confused the ESS system even more.

4) Batteries were damaged during all this and although mostly showing holding of power and volts both had some cell issues and both were replaced for good measure.

My theory if what the dealership is saying is the cause of all this, is that the problem started with the engine bay fuse box and the fuses not being seated properly. This caused the smart “generator/inverter” to have to work harder controlling/regulating the electrical system power and it finally burned up. The ESS was the primary victim of the fuses and generator failure. The fuses not being seated fully, thus unknown if working correctly, could have been the reason why all the smaller functions went haywire during each event.

Please feel free to add your thought or theory based on what the dealership reported. It will help others that are experiencing these issues.

UPDATE 12/06

Back to the dealership on Monday morning there is still more work to be done. Lost steering power, curse control, park sensors, voltage output drops and a few service “xyz” systems warnings while driving though a hilly twisting turning frwy section on my way home. Surprised NO...P’d off YES!

Can’t wait to see what the OBD print out says this time.

UPDATE 12/08

This is the latest OBD print out of the problems experienced on 12/06. Still ALL electrical related !
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Man, I'm currently having this exact same issue. I've been back and forth to the dealership since mid September. So far they've replace a wiring harness in the passenger side wheel well, installed a new steering pump & as of yesterday a new ABS Module.
I got the Jeep back this morning and the same thing happened again on my way home.
Needless to say it will be brought back to the dealership first thing in the morning.

I'm glad you and your family are ok BTW, I've had the exact same thing happen to me except I was driving on the Highway doing 100kms when I lost power steering, breaks & the Jeep completely shut off.

I certainly hope for both our sakes this gets fixed soon.
 

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JeepDrvr2018

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All - You all every single one who is experiencing this issue, needs to file an NHTSA report, outlining exactly what happened, and what Jeep is doing about it. This sounds like major recall, wiring harness is faulty, or some computer is faulty. Also mention the loose fuses because many don't know what is going on with that. This will ensure all Jeep owners are going to be taken care of. It also could be not just the wrangler, but other models as well. Since it's closely related, suspect the Gladiator is also affected. Please make those reports.
 

Craigzjeep

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NASA landed men on the moon with " less computer power" then we have in our cell phones now.
And half a century later jeep is still fuckin around half baked bad engineering .
 

JeepDrvr2018

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Monty talks and bulls**t walks. It's all down to money. and believe it or not, .05c makes a hell of a difference when talking about 200K vehicles. They can fix it in house, or have to pay dealer, fix it they will.
 
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Fsttanks

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All - You all every single one who is experiencing this issue, needs to file an NHTSA report, outlining exactly what happened, and what Jeep is doing about it. This sounds like major recall, wiring harness is faulty, or some computer is faulty. Also mention the loose fuses because many don't know what is going on with that. This will ensure all Jeep owners are going to be taken care of. It also could be not just the wrangler, but other models as well. Since it's closely related, suspect the Gladiator is also affected. Please make those reports.
I already filed a report and would encourage everyone to do the same.
 

jjdustr340

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Interesting. The partly installed fuses have been reported as the possible source of various problems since the JL came out in 2018. Whether those are installed by a robot or by hand, they really need to address the fact that they can't even install a fuse right after three years. Mine were half-installed in my 2019, too. Holy smoke. And I joked about an alternator with a computer; but sure enough, it DOES have one!!! Tech is getting WAY out of control. I just want to drive a car to work, not land on friggin' Mars.
It hasn’t gotten any better. I purchased a 2021 JT a month ago. Having purchased my wife a 2020 JLU back in July, I was already aware of the partially seated fuses from dealing with the whole “loose steering/pull the fuse” fiasco in it. One of the first things I did with my JT (built in July btw) was check the seating of the fuses. Out of all of them, maybe 6 were fully seated. The rest I had to push in fully.
 

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Fsttanks

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UPDATE 12/11

Now on day FIVE since the THIRD towed into the dealership (12/07-11). On 12/07 they said they were bring in a Jeep factory engineer to find the problems. Since then radio silence........

This makes my Jeep in the shop(s) for repairs during this entire fiasco at more then 30 days out of the last 40 days and towed in three times.

Im giving Jeep a fair shot at permanently fixing the problems and not rushing the dealership or factory engineer(s) but this is the last time.

On a side note: The second dealership has been overall great and I am pleased with the effort they are putting into the problem so far. I realize they can only do so much at their level.
 

Turfman

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I strongly advise everyone experiencing these problems to study up on the Lemon Law. it appears that a few of you have rights to evoke this law and get a new replacement Jeep if you desire or to get your money back.

After three or four times and being in a shop for 30 days (not consecutive) without it not being repaired you have your rights.
 

jeepoch

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Tony, et. al.,

Sorry I'm so late to this conversation. While I am in no way currently associated with FCA or the automotive industry any longer, I was a Software Engineer with Chrysler helping develop their Powertrain Control systems for their 2000 through 2006 Model Year Small Car, Large Car and Jeep Truck programs.
The lure of living in Colorado pulled me away from the metro-Detroit area rat-race.

Everything electronic back then was either already Controller Area Network (CAN) connected or moving that way. So fast forward to today, I would suspect that every electronic component requiring some input or output control is indeed connected to the CAN bus.

For the uninitiated the CAN mechanism is indeed a 'bus'. That means that many 'nodes' can be physically connected together in a common link. This link is made up of generally a twisted pair of wires. One being marked plus + the other being marked minus -. This provides an electrical differentiated signal to be used as the physical link. It is the difference in voltage (rather than the voltage level) that is used to define the actual signalling.

The CAN protocol itself is rather sophisticated and was designed and used as a very reliable (short distance) communication control system. Each and every node within this two wire 'bus' has a unique CAN address that has a built-in priority scheme. Any node can communicate with any other node via a seven byte message (frame). Each frame consists of the source and destination's node address as well as the message payload itself. Any node can originate a message at any time but only the message with the highest priority address will win bus arbitration at any particular instant.

In practice, the communication strategy is typically implemented with a high-priority source control module that manages lower-priority peripheral components. Each controller typically has their own separate bus to talk within their own little sphere of responsible components. The door sensors are monitored by the body controller, the volume knob is monitored by the radio, the O2 sensors are monitored by the engine controller etc. Then the top level controllers are then connected to each other by yet another separate bus.

However, in practice there are many factors trying to thrift away cost. Each and every little piece of anything costs money to be installed. So there is always great pressure to eliminate stuff like 'wires'. Well it doesn't seem like much, every penny saved on volume production generates potentially millions, or more, in savings.

A common practice is to replace the minus (-) wire with the common vehicle frame (ground). Thus you now only need a single wire rather than the more common (and more expensive) twisted pair. However, in so doing the twisted pair reduces, even eliminates, cross induced noise from the electrical signaling, whereas the single wire solution will not. So like everything in nature there are tradeoffs. In this case cost vs noise immunity in regards to reliable message exchange.

Looking at the JL's CAN wiring diagram, it doesn't appear that the single wire approach has been implemented. But this is just a diagram. In practice, some sensors may certainly be. However for the backbone bus, the one connecting all the major controllers together, these should be high quality twisted pair links.

So in order to have so many component faults, this indicates a fundamental signaling failure between the top-level controllers. It very well maybe a high-impedence short that is clobbering the CAN addressing mechanism.

The only good way to troubleshoot this is by isolation. You need to remove each node one at a time, starting at the highest priority components and work your way down. If I was the engineer assigned to go puzzle this problem out, I would be removing the in-vehicle harnesses and bypassing them with an isolated counterpart. Then revaluating the condition of the overall system. Continuing to do this potentially with each and every harness throughout the entire vehicle. But this troubleshooting would be way beyond the skill of an ordinary dealership tech. Not impossible, but access to the harnesses and protocal analyzers would make it rather difficult if not outright prohibitive. Unless you found a dealership owner with very deep pockets willing to Fix an FCA problem. Isn't ever going to happen.

I would further suspect that FCA would highly value your Jeep in order to really (scientifically) understand what went wrong on this particular vehicle.

If they offer to buy it back, please let them. While every problem is solvable, some things are better solved with the bigger picture in mind. Whether this was a manufacturing flaw or a design defect it will benefit all of us to have them look at this vehicle from an engineering rather than dealership perspective. Having the NHTSA involved certainly makes your Jeep more valuable to them than to you.

If I was on the team assigned to evaluate this, my recommendation would be to give you a top-of-the-line Rubicon (or whatever it is you want) in order to do an absolutely sound failure analysis on this particular unit.

Hang in there. Jeep's are certainly more reliable than whatever happened here. I suspect a manufacturing flaw or a pinched or shorted wire to something other than a hard ground. And I suspect it's on the inter-connected controller harness which is likely the hardest to replace. Hence why no one is willing to replace it.

Again I can be all wet behind the ears. But I don't believe so.

Good luck, thank you for being so remarkably understanding and patient. Also, I'd be the first one to contribute to a Go-Fund me page if FCA doesn't own up and do the right thing.

Jeep on Tony. You are certainly one of the good guys. You have all my respect.

Jay
 

JimSa

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Jay, that was an awesome and very thoughtful explanation. Thank you so much for taking the time! I can confirm that CAN-BUS is indeed twisted pair. In my own case what was happening is that the pair had been shorted together and each of the + and - were reading 2.5v. So with no differential voltage on C3, all hell broke loose across the entire bus. That seems like a flaw to me, where one short can take everything down. I suspect that something similar might happening to the OP.

You are also spot on for the diagnosis technique. One do it yourself approximation of this (when the issue is reproducible) is to start unplugging the twisted pair connectors, one (and only one) at a time from the CAN-BUS behind the glove box. You just have to be aware of what you are unplugging and NOT assume that vehicle can be driven to test without being ABSOLUTELY certain of what function(s) were disabled. This technique tends to work if the vehicle is throwing all sorts of errors when simply going from ACC to Run w/o even starting, so not to risk driving.

Edit: Oh, and if there is a short, what will likely happen is that you will go from lots of errors to far fewer errors and those errors will likely be exclusive to the controllers on that Cn that was unplugged because of failures to communicate.
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