Three problems related to power train have been reported for the 1998 Dodge Durango. The most recently reported issues are listed below.
Due to to uneven driveway the vehicle stalled, or transmission began to spin and not move, at which the vehicle ignition was shut-off. It was attempted to push the vehicle about 50 feet to a parking place. Another person offers to help, then pushes vehicle 25/50 feet. . . Advises to turn the wheel. The wheel does not want to turn. The vehicle has used a lot of power steering fluid almost daily(has a history of squealing and hard turning at start unless lubricated). So advice to place vehicle in reverse caused the steering wheel to be even harder to turn, if at all. I requested help from the bystander, who at which point comes to the driver side where I was standing outside of the vehicle also. It's unknown if the bystander help turned the ignition on, or if the ignition somehow turned on by itself. The vehicle was occupied by one addition passenger at the time of the crash. The vehicle traveled in reverse gear, without anyone pushing on the accelerator. There were minor to severe injuries, and damage to 2 vehicles and one structure.
The contact owns a 1998 Dodge Durango. The contact stated that while driving approximately 5 mph, the vehicle failed to accelerate. The contact applied the accelerator pedal to the floorboard but the vehicle would not respond beyond 30 mph. The vehicle was not taken to a dealer or an independent mechanic for diagnosis. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was not made aware of the problem. The approximate failure mileage was not available.
Bought my Durango new in may 1998. The automatic transmission started shifting improperly in July 2000. Took it to a Dodge dealer because it was still under warranty (31,418 miles). They dropped the transmission pan and pronounced it doa (pan was full of metal shavings). Should have seen the writing on the wall but I loved this vehicle. Took it to an inspection station for safety & emissions tests in may of 2006. It failed for bad ball joints. I asked the manager why his mechanics seemed to pay special attention to the front end during inspection and his reply was it was very common to find bad ball joints on approx. 50% of all 1998-2000 Durangos. Had my mechanic replace upper & lower ball joints, both sides, at 74,064 miles, to the tune of $701 plus tax. I then started hearing about other Durango owners with similar ball joint woes. I went online and started researching. Found a site where folks like myself with the same ball joint problems, some with accidents, were trying to get NHTSA to do something. I guess people actually have to die first before NHTSA will step in and tell an auto manufacturer they need to fix their faulty products. I also learned that the 1998-2000 Durangos were built on the Dodge dakota pickup chassis. A dakota weighs about 4,600 lbs. While a Durango 4x4 weighs in at 6,400 lbs. It's no wonder the 1998-2000 Durango front-ends were falling apart. Seriously, what kind of idiot engineers does Dodge have working for them. Sometime later I heard that Dodge rushed the Durango into production in 1998 to compete for the SUV market bucks and didn't have time to engineer a new chassis so they just modified the dakota chassis without beefing it up. When people started to complain about ball joints and such, they built a whole new chassis for Durangos in 2001. I stumbled across this site today while researching another vehicle I'm thinking about buying.