1998 Dodge Caravan electrical wierdness

My '98 Caravan, which up til now has been extremely reliable, now is dead, and displaying very odd symptoms. My wife had driven it about 45 minutes to a friends house, no problems. 3 hours after she got there, she went to start the van, and it wouldn't do anything. What was wierd was when she took the key out of the ignition, there was a clicking noise under the dash, to the left of the steering wheel. This noise just continued and wouldn't stop. WIth key in iginition, nothing worked - no panel, no lights, nothing. The friends husband messed with it a bit, said at one point the dome light came on, but was going on and off, and the panel lit up and acted erratically, but each time he turned the ignition on, everything went deal.

Does this sound like something as simple as a weak battery, or does it sound more like some bizarre electrical problem, or a failed computer module of some sort? The battery is just over four years old, and was a fairly premium model when I bought it. Haven't had any trouble starting it lately.

Reply to
robert.macnutt
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Hi Robert...

Don't know if the symptoms are sufficiently related to be of interest, but had weird similar things happening once.. intermittently... one day fine, the next not.

Turned out to be one cell in the battery intermittently shorted (while hot).

Take care.

Ken

Reply to
Ken Weitzel

Yup! Had the same thing happen on my old 94 Acclaim. Intermittent short on one cell in the battery. That wuld be the very first thing I would check.

Reply to
NewMan

Ken Weitzel wrote in news:FqwEg.414461$IK3.73042@pd7tw1no:

My 1st though would be the battery, age is about right for a failure, likely one or two cells gone south. Jump start may not work, try a new or different battery. Had this on my Cougar, and Astro Van (twice) and Laser, jumps didn't work, replacing battery fixed problem.

Reply to
Nirodac

Sounds to me like the battery is bad, the external connections to it are loose/dirty/intermittent, or possibly a bad alternator not allowing the battery to charge. IN any event, it should be a fairly simple and painless fix once you know which it is.

Bob

Reply to
Bob Shuman

Yep, it was a bad battery. Put a new one in, and it cranked up and everything worked fine.

Only one minor remaining problem: The lights on the A/C, Recirculate, Rear Wiper and Rear Wiper Intermittent buttons all blink on and off together. The buttons all do what they're supposed to, you just can't tell if they're on or off. My wife drove it home, and after a while (20-30 minutes I think) the lights went off, but next time she stopped and started it up they went back to blinking.

Any ideas about that?

Reply to
robert.macnutt

Hi...

Battery voltage has been too low/disconnected too long, just requires reset... (I think :)

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Ken

Reply to
Ken Weitzel

Reply to
philthy

Needs to be calibrated. Just can't remember the right button combo at the moment...

Reply to
bllsht

Success! The procedure outlined at allpar.com did the trick - derblinkenlightzen are now gone!

Many thanks, > >

Reply to
robert.macnutt

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