If you drive a Dodge Dart, Chrysler 200 or Jeep Cherokee, Renegade or Compass with the 2.4-liter TigerShark 4-cylinder engine, there is a chance that you have oil use issues. Some of these engines burn a significant enough amount of oil that owners find themselves regularly adding oil between changes, which is both costly and annoying. Fortunately, a new customer satisfaction program can seemingly fix that problem with a simple engine calibration.
According to our friends at Allpar, the 2.4-liter MultiAir system individually adjusts each cylinders valve timing and lift. During certain types of driving, there are situations where there is excess vacuum that pulls oil into the cylinders. That oil is then burned off during the combustion process. For those who spend a great deal of time in stop-and-go situations, the amount of oil burned during this point of excess vacuum can be significant. Those are the owners who are most likely adding the greatest amount of oil between changes. At the same time, there are owners who have logged many miles on vehicles with the 2.4-lier TigerShark engine without any unusual oil use.
The good news is that fix is as simple as an engine calibration. As part of the reflash, the MultiAir system can be adjusted to avoid those points of excess vacuum, thus preventing the unusual oil burning.
This campaign currently applies to the following vehicles:
-2014 Dodge Dart and Jeep Cherokee
-2017-19 Jeep Renegade, Compass, and Cherokee
-2017 Chrysler 200
A company source revealed that all the TigerShark 2.4 liter engines with this problem will be updated in time; some customers have contacted us to say that cars not on this list were covered by similar campaigns. The software has to be validated on each model year, to conform to the rules in effect at the time.
Renegades can not be reprogrammed and requires a new engine that has been redesigned, this information comes straight from my dealer, I just failed the oil consumption test and they are ordering the new engine for me.
If that’s the case why aren’t there a recall
There is a recall, we were sent it, took ours in for the oil consumption test, it failed, and they replaced the long block.
Lol, it’s the same 2.4l in every single jeep that has a 2.4l in it since 2012.
The renegades aren’t special.
The reflash may or may not work, depending on damage already done to the engine, oil consumption isn’t likely to decrease in an engine that’s already damaged.
The problem is that in order to meet regulations in the us, this motor, which was designed to run on 5w30, has to be run on a significantly lighter oil. 0w20 is what is recommended by fca in the us. I have a 2018 cherokee manual thats in Spanish, from Mexico, that clearly recommends 5w30.
The lighter oil, while allowing some parts to run faster/ more efficiently bypasses the already design-lacking oil control rings under normal operating conditions, but more dramatically under decel when suction forces can be higher
This isn’t because these forces aren’t normal for any engine, they completely are. With this lighter oil, however, an engine designed for 5w20 has trouble keeping oil where it belongs in the best of cases.
Fca’s bandaid is basically to open the intake valves at varying times on deceleration, breaking the suction and keeping more of the oil on the correct side of the rings.
This bandaid comes after the last one fell off. The Last bandaid they came up with was to reflash the pcm to throw an “oil level low” warning much sooner than before. Obviously this keeps the engine from destroying itself, because it reminds the owner to top it off.
But now people are realizing just how much oil these consume, they are complaining even more, so fca came up with a new vct flash to break the suction on deceleration, slowing oil consumption.
If your engine was always topped up, or rarely low enough to cause damage and you recieved this campaign notice, this bandaid might actually (mostly) solve your consumption problems.
If your engine was regularly run low enough to starve the multiair system and stall, (way lower than the point which damages other component) it’s likely too late to fix.
In this case This flash may slow consumption slightly, but any heat or abrasion damage that changed clearances, or scored cylinders, bearings, or crank/cam shafts Is still going to be there, so you will likely still consume a huge amount of oil.
Fca screwed themselves with the 2.4l kittenfish, and they screw everyone that bought one daily by pretending 1 quart per 1k miles is “normal” in anything but a race car.
If you got a redesign, you should consider yourself lucky. The only permanent fix to this is to re-engineer this engines oil system almost completely, to allow the proper clearances for the 0w20 oil that this engine requires to make us standards.