VM Motori (2.5–2.8)
inline-4 · turbocharged · diesel · 1984–present
Also known as: c498qa, c498qa3, ra428, vm motori, r428, 425 crd, vm425, vm 425
VM Motori is an independent Italian diesel specialist, not a marque — which is why its engines turn up under Jeep, Chrysler, Land Rover, Alfa Romeo and Ford badges with nothing to say they share a designer.
⚑ That is the whole reason to have this page. A C498QA in a Cherokee XJ and an RA428 in a Voyager look like two unrelated oddities in the parts catalogue, and they are the same firm's work thirty years apart. Searching the VM designation finds material that searching the vehicle does not.
Its house characteristic is the individual cylinder head — one per cylinder on the older engines, rather than a single casting across the bank. That makes a head gasket failure a per-cylinder event and the repair a different job from the one a technician expects.
The 2.8 RA428 is the widely fitted one, in the Voyager, the Wrangler and a long list of light commercials, and it is a modern common-rail engine with the ordinary consequences: injectors, the particulate filter, and swirl flaps on some fitments.
VM has been Stellantis-owned since 2013, which is why later material files under the group rather than under its own name.
Cars fitted with this engine
3 generations, across 3 makes. From the authored catalogue — an absent car means the catalogue has not reached it, not that the engine was never fitted.
Chrysler
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
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What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
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