I am glad to hear that someone else has sensed somthing strange about the way the PCM treats coasting; both going down a hill or decline as well as general free-wheeling. This makes me feel that I am not being too imaginative.....
When all the smoke settles, my bet is that it will have something to do with the way the PCM, Anti-Lock controller and wheel speed sensors talk to each other and will either be corrected by flash update (fancy name for correcting the firmware; software that runs the PCM), or be blindly overlooked until the warranty is over.
We all should become well versed in the lemon law regulations; especially the ones that put a time-limit on resolving a problem, and address how long the car can be in the shop for a single complaint.
It is a shame to have to resort to that, but it may be what it will take on some of these firmware problems. It is unfortunate that the dealer takes the financial hit.
Years ago, I worked Warranty, Parts and MIS for Yugo of America, at the port level. Despite the fact that both the body and engine were time proven Fiat designs (each with over 10 years of past production to shake out problems), the quality control in Yugoslavia (where supervisors are voted in by the workers) was basically non-existent.
By the time the port processors traced most problems back to lack of QC and could implement a Quality Control program, the public was already shying away from the car.
That, coupled by the time it would take to process an international parts order to correct a problem discovered after purchase would almost always result in a buy-back situation under the Lemon Law (in states where it applied, due to the consecutive time the car was in the shop, or time between diagnosis and repair.
Automotive manufactures eventually feel the effect of this kind of building reputation; even though it probably affects the dealer level far more and far quicker.
We all know what the general opinion of Yugo is, and what appeared to be their demise. I got over 55,000 trouble free miles out of my company car, (Yugo) and sold it to a friend who needed a car for his daughter. By that time, the company had already gone under, and I had merged into the computer industry as a hardware technician.
Reading the lemon law supplement that came with your car every second that you are in the service area's waiting room may be an incentive for the dealer's Service Department to start lighting a fire under Chrysler Corporate early in the game for problem resolution.
My comments may sound overly negative, but the Service Department's tendancy to justify the problem of the phantom braking as "turbo lag" sets the stage. Due to the small size of the turbocharger used on the GT, there is minimal, if any, turbo lag.
There is a known problem of spooling too quick, and it is often seen with the cruise engaged and encountering an incline, or when the turbo is called upon to produce power when the RPM's are too low and the current gear is too high.
This is usually where the p1188 error is born, although it may take considerable time for it to "mature" enoung to be a full blown error code. Again, it will eventually take some firmware correction to make that error go away also.
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