1999 Dodge Grand Caravan IMS Rampvan conversion... How to fix the door clutch.

Guess I should have written this article back last March when everything was fresh in my mind. Today is one of those lazy winter days nestled between Christmas and New Years. It just came to my attention that this problem is more common than I had thought. Luckily I took photos with the Panasonic Lumix I had gotten as a present LAST Christmas.

Symptom: The door was getting slower and slower until finally it stopped altogether. If the door takes too long to close the black box beeps five times. It had been beeping a month or so and the handicap van shop couldn't tell me why. Geez, and these guys ask $65 per hour!

At first I thought it was dirt in the door roller tracks or lack of lubrication. But cleaning and lubing the track and rollers was only a temporary fix. The door would stop again after a few days. The handicap van shop quoted $1300 for a new motor/clutch mechanism and 10 hours of labor. Yikes! No way I was going to bend over for that! As it turned out there was nothing wrong with the drive motor, which is only a car window motor. I forget now, but it was either a Ford Ranger or Mustang power window motor. The only difference was the number of teeth on the drive gear. I just don't remember which vehicle had the motor with the correct gear. If yours goes out just take it to your local neighborhood auto parts store and match it up.

And...it only took a single, totally inexperienced (in handicap vans) guy 4 hours to do the entire job. My friend, Kelly Roberson, stand up and take a bow! He might have finished even faster if I'd stayed out of his way. My muscular dystrophy makes me kind of useless in the mechanical work end...but I'm a decent conversationalist.

As you'll soon see in the photos there was nothing wrong with the mechanism either. The dealer claimed IMS ONLY sold the entire assembly as a replacement part. I was not able to confirm this with IMS. They won't talk to lowly consumers who only own and drive their product. The problem was the plastic thrust washer in the clutch. The clutch itself, again you'll see photos soon, is an off-the-shelf product. After getting the numbers off the clutch body, I contacted the manufacturer and their OEM price was in the $20 range. It has been several months so I can't remember the exact cost.

Let me stop and rant for a bit...

IMS refused to sell me a service manual. I can understand them refusing to sell directly to consumers, but they also refused to sell a manual through their dealer! They do have a very nice manual. I was able to thumb through it while at the van shop. In all fairness (even though their quote was bold faced robbery) the dealer did try to get the manual for me. It was totally IMS's refusal to put repair info in their customers hands. My daughter, the law student, states their position won't stand up in court. She quoted some early 60's case of a group of non-dealer car repair shops versus GM. But I didn't follow a litigation route. I just fixed it.

Being a symplistic minded engineer, my response has been to bad mouth IMS's service policy to prospective buyers. So far I have been able to talk five people out of purchasing an IMS. They have lost a lot of business because of their manual policy...and me. Hopefully this article will lose them some more. Although this is not the true purpose of my writing this how-to, it may become a fringe benefit. The real reason is I've noticed this clutch problem is common and would like to help save a few folk some money.

I think Braun has bought IMS since my dealings of trying to get the manual. If this is true, and Braun has changed IMS's manual selling policy, would some reader please inform me. I would gladly eradicate my written words and stop the bad mouthing because, all in all, the conversion has been fairly dependable.

Back to the clutch problem...

There was nothing wrong with the clutch's functioning, only the thrust washer was worn out. After all, one doesn't buy a new car when the tires wear out. You just get new tires! So a new washer was made. We found a chunk of UHMW-PE laying around so we chucked it in a lathe and turned it to a guessed at OD and ID then parted it off to a guessed at thickness. We must have guessed pretty good because the door has been functioning perfectly for nine months.

What? You don't have a lathe? You don't have chunks of Ultra High Molecular Weight PolyEthylene lying around? Well, me either. But I am fortunate enough to be a contract engineer who works with several machine shops that do. A few days after fixing the clutch curiosity (and a cell phone with unlimited long distance) prompted me to call the clutch manufacturer. They sell replacement washers. In fact, they offered to send me one for free. Guess I might should have taken them up on the offer! Having a spare wouldn't have hurt. Anyway, you can find Deltran's CFC line of clutches here: Deltran clutch catalog

Now, on to the photos...

The middle seat's seat belt must also be disconnected. Study the mounting bolt and washer setup. Now the lower panel can be slid forward to give access to remove the motor/clutch mechanism. Finding out how to get this lower panel out actually took half our time.

All that trouble of removing the lower interior panel was to get this out. It looks to me like IMS could have relocated the mounting holes and avoided all the fuss. They just might have done that. So let me repeat: Before going to too much trouble with the interior panels, try to get to the mounting screws and try to remove this mechanism.

Remove the four bolts in the motor mounting plate. The motor can be left mounted to this plate. Notice the builder initials and date.

On the other end of the clutch, remove the clutch pulley by loosening the setscrews. Just loosen them enough to pull the pulley, then remove the clutch from the big plate.

Those chunks in there aren't dirt--they are what is left of a thrust washer. Mine was completely disentegrated and there had been heavy metal to metal contact. Lots of galling! After cleaning out the washer bits we chucked it up in a lathe and used sandpaper to face the center metal ring. I didn't want much metal removed so we used handheld sandpaper.

The mating piece was also galled. We chucked and sanded it too. It'd be more work but sanding without the lathe is very doable.

Here it is almost finished sanding. Btw, this clutch is ONLY activated when the motor is energized. This is why you can open the door without the door motor running. It is just a big electromagnet with a plastic thrust washer between the two spinning halves of the clutch. Any clutch slippage is taken against the plastic washer.

All cleaned up with a new washer installed.

Kind of hard to read but the clutch is a Deltran CFC-30B 12vdc and built 9-16-98