Hello all! Recently I had a problem with my 2014 Dodge Charger SE (8 speed). My dash language changed from English to German, my radio doesn’t work, and my defrost is stuck on full blast with heat.
I’ve tried looking up solutions, but all forums and old post just suggest “bringing into local dodge dealership” with no one giving an answer for what exactly caused the issue.
I took it to my local dealership, but pretty sure they’re f*cking me over and not giving me good hopes. It starts as a “1-2 day diagnosis” that took 2 and a half weeks before they even took a look at my car, then they messaged me yesterday saying
“I have received diag back for your vehicle. The tech has diagnosed that we need to start out with the radio. The cost is $742.93. I will have to order the radio as they are special order units”.
I then asked if that would FOR SURE fix the issue if i’m going to pay almost $800 for a fix then they said
“The current situation is radio module is getting proper power and ground. The radio itself is offline which indicates the radio has failed. The radio also controls the ac and heat controls which is why they are not working at this moment. So this is why We need to replace the radio, then retest. If the radio is all good then the final amount would be $742.93, unless we find another issue.”
TLDR: Dash language changed to German, Radio doesn’t work at all, Climate controls don’t work at all (defrost stuck on high). Dealership said $742.93 to replace the radio and retest (may fix issue may not). Anyone ever deal with this before?
That module does control all of that and is the likely suspect. Because of the design you can’t do anything like bypass it for testing. You basically have to check power/grounds and then look at the network signals to see if it is active or not and go on that. Sounds like that is what they did and determined the module is the problem, it’s actually somewhat common as a failure item.