Top 5 Problems 3rd Generation Chrysler Sebring Sedan 2007-10

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.