Chrysler newbie.

You want the manual in Canadian, eh? I bought my owner's manual and the shop or factory manual off eBay. The owner's manual was around $7, usually they wanted more on eBay but I got lucky. Same for the shop manual, around $25 or so. I think both are helpful and there are things in one that are not in the other, even regarding maintenance. One nice thing about the shop manual, it will decode that plate in the engine compartment. My vehicle was built in Windsor in Canada!

My gauge also has a life of its own. I find keeping it full helps, sometimes. The sending unit is inside the gas tank, so it's a bit of labor to fix, if it's the sending unit. I'll have to use mileage until I get it fixed. But it's annoying to have half a tank and it reads empty. If it's a ground somewhere, that's a lot easier and cheaper to fix.

I would check the bulbs if it's easy to get to them and a little twist to unsocket them. If they are black, it's likely they are burned out. I'm not a mechanic so maybe the others will have good suggestions.

The sending unit is bad causing the flucuation. It is really easy to replace because the fuel pump is accessed thru the trunk after you remove the access plate. As far as the lites go, I assume you are talking about the dash lites, all you can do is remove the dash and check em. replace if they are burnt

Glenn Beasley Chrysler Tech

Hi Glenn...

Thanks for your reply; good news about the fuel gauge, hopefully not too expensive. :)

The lights I meant is the ones that I think are called running lights, outside the car. The ones that automagically come on whenever the engine runs.

Looking at the front from outside, the outer ones are park/turn signals, and work fine. Next is the headlight, seems both high and low beams are in the same enclosure if i make sense. Then finally nearest the grill are smaller round lights. Looking at them it appears almost like there's a magnifying glass behind the bezel or something. They never come on. Am I right in assuming that they should light when the engine runs?

Thanks again, and take care.

Ken

The owners manual is OK, but a Factory Service Manual is far better.

Could be a bad sending unit. The fuel pump and sending unit on that car is accessible by lifting the carpeting in the trunk and opening an access plate over the fuel pump. Gotta kinda squeeze into the trunk to work on it, but sure beats dropping the tank!

Chrysler's don't normally come with stupid daytime running lights. Canadian versions got them, not US versions. Was your car originally sold in the US? If not, then maybe the DRL fuse is out, or the DRL module has failed. Dan Stern (frequent poster here) can steer you in the right direction if daytime stupid lights are required by law where you live. Otherwise, count your blessings you don't have to DEactivate them to have a normal car that won't annoy everyone else on the road.

The have an owner's manual through techauthority.daimlerchrysler.com for $10.00 USD, but it looks like they only go back to 1995.

-Kirk Matheson

It has been so long since I had worked on that system I cant remember, Have you tried to pull the headlamp switch knob out while the low beams are on to see if they turn on?

Glenn Beasley Chrysler Tech

Hi Glenn...

Yessir, now I don't have to check the bulbs :) Great. It pulls out in the A mode, or with the headlights on, but not in either of the other two positions (off and park).

If pulled out with the headlights on, they come on, and so does a small green led in the center of the switch.

If pulled out in the A mode, nothing happens. Perhaps because it's the middle of the day bright, and I can't find that particular sensor to cover it to test :)

Now my silly question - laugh if you must - are these the drl's, or is there some other use for them as well?

Thanks, and take care.

Ken

They're wanna-be "fog" lights. Not good for anything except spewing random photons around and annoying oncoming traffic.

Make sure the front end reinforcement recall was done on that car or someday you will have an awful surprise when one of your front wheels caves in.

I had a 94 LHS. Be aware that the ride is almost fully dependent on tire quality. Stay away from the original Goodyears which rode like rocks after a year of use. I switched to some Uniroyal self sealing tires and they were terrific on the car ride wise at least.

The head lights on that car sucked.

If the car is noisy inside and/or you get a clunk from under the AT shifter console when parking, it is probably the rear AT mount. It has a large effect on the noise, vibration and harshness of the vehicle.

Great rear seat in that car.

Hi Art...

Thanks for the warning... one of the wheels falling off isn't a good way to start the day, so instead I called the local dealer. Read the service advisor the serial number, and within minutes he told me that the repair was done in 2000. Whew! He did say there are two others outstanding, but not safety related. (driver seat power issue, and a shift handle something or other).

Still haven't found an owners manual, still can't get the drl's (mandatory here) to work. Perhaps because a third party remote starter has been installed. One relay in the engine fuse compartment removed, and a single wire jumper installed in its place. The relay sits loose in that compartment, perhaps I'll stick it in and see what happens.

The tires - one had a slow leak. Looks new, so I got walmart to patch it. They inflated all of them to 35 pounds, even though the door sticker suggests 30. Ride is harder now, but guess fuel economy improves a little. Dunno which is right(er).

And - seeing you had one - do you remember how the sun roof looked when properly closed? With this one if you use the close button it stops with the rearmost part down about a quarter or three eighths of an inch lower that what "looks right" I can make it look level and nice by juggling the open/close button, but...

The back seat sure is comfortable. Makes me wish I was about 50 years younger :)

Take care.

Ken

That one's easy to spot. If there is a bracket that wraps around the engine cradle frame member and "doubles" the LCA bolt ears, then its been done. Hardly even have to get down on one knee to see it :-)

Power driver's seat track inserts- if the seat jerks or twists sideways when moving fore/aft, get it done, otherwise ignore it.

The shifter is an interlock thing- supposedly the interlock that prevents you from moving the shift lever can fail allowing you to shift out of "park" with no key in the car. I positively hate "nanny" devices like that anyway (DRLs, automatic headlamps, auto-release parking brakes, 'can't shift into drive without a foot on the brake' interlocks, etc.) so I've been HOPING that it would fail on my wife's car. No such look in 237,000 miles :-(

Daniel Stern is on a business trip right now, or I'm sure he'd have already piped up with a cheap and reliable aftermarket DRL module. I'm sorry I don't remember the name of the module he recommends, but I seem to recall that he considered it a better implementation than most factory DRL systems.

Eww, that's cheesy! The underside of the cover for the relay compartment has a nice diagram that tells you what each relay is. Flip it over and hold it beside the relays, and you'll see which relay is bypassed.

Now it COULD be that the previous owner did what I did- there's an unused relay slot, and I carry a relay-bypassing wire in that unused slot just in case my fuel pump relay or ASD relay (or any other essential relay like cooling fans) takes a poop while I'm miles from home... but you shouldn't really leave a relay bypassed like that.

I had no sunroof in mine. I think it was the only option in 94 and we bought one off the lot without it.

Hi Steve...

The plot thickens... the bypassed relay is marked starter relay. Removing the jumper and replacing it with the relay prevents remote starting. Hear it doing other things, but the starter never turns. But the key won't start it, either :)

Perhaps this explains why there's another (added) switch hanging beside that fuse box that does nothing more than crank the starter?

Putting the jumper back, I noticed that the remote will again start it, and it turns on the parking lights. (all of them).

Do you happen to know (in layman description) where the drl module is? Maybe I could look at it just for the heck of it. (old retired electrical guy)

Good to know about the seat, it has twisted a couple of times going back. Seems the door side keeps going, center sticks and need just a bit of encouragement. I'll let 'em fix that one for free :) :)

One more, if I may, just to be on the safe side. Want to remove the radio to look at. (display is intermittent). GM uses the passcode system to know I didn't steal it. Does Chrysler have anything similar, or can I just pull it and put it back.

You'd get along well with my next door neighbor. Retired Canadian Air Force captain (pilot). Love Chryslers, won't touch anything else, and despises anything designed to protect him from himself :)

Thanks again, and take care.

Ken

Hi Art...

Thanks. I'm probably going to regret this one, too. Granddaughters like it, but no one will if ever it decides to leak :(

Take care.

Ken

Sounds like a hack job to me, but then IMO most aftermarket "alarm systems" and "remote starters" wind up being hack jobs.

No, I really don't. I've never seen an LH car with one. I fired a private E-mail off to Dan, hopefully he'll pipe up on here in a day or so.

Yep, that's the one.

Unless its there in a higher-optioned car than wifey's 93, the anser is no. I've popped a completely different junkyard stereo (with CD instead of cassette) in place of the one that came in her car.

The gene pool gets nasty when we take all the chlorine out of it... ;-)

The Chrysler Daytime Running Light module used in the mid '90s is failure-prone and expensive. This car used the high beam headlamps as DRLs

-- the high beam mode of the large outboard lamps, not the inboard ones. Since your module failed in the friendly way (DRLs quit working -- rather than their staying on all the time) suggest you dispense with the poorly-designed factory module and retrofit the $39 module from

. This will burn your front turn signals full time as DRLs (except, of course, when they are flashing as turn signals). This is legal under Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 108. If you never want to horse with burned out bulbs, or at least not for a long time, swing by the Saturn dealer and pick up a set of front turn signal bulbs for an '04 Saturn Ion. These will be marked 5702KA and last practically forever (meant to tolerate GM's inappropriately high voltage regulator setpoints).

The headlamps on that car, by the way, are awful. If you drive at night at all, swing by Crappy Tire and pick up a set of GE Night Hawk 9007NH bulbs (not Sylvania Silverstars!). If you drive *much* at night, put in headlamp relays.

DS

Dyment Distribution Service in the greater Toronto area (haven't got their phone number, find it on

) handles all the Chrysler literature for Canada. Pick up a factory service manual while you're at it.

First repair to achieve with your new factory service manual!

Hi Daniel...

Thanks very much for your help; I sincerely appreciate it!

Surely the high beams don't run full out - are they perhaps connected in series?

Anyway, I agree that the third party option you suggest is far better, but just before I order one I'd really like to see the module first. Rationale is that given the extremes of folks who like them and those that hate them there's a possibility that they may well be simply disconnected. Maybe a long shot, but I'd like to look :)

Crappy tire didn't have a haynes manual, but wallyworld had a Chilton - says covers us and canadian 93 thru 97; so I got one. Not a single mention of drl's :(

So I looked myself, didn't find it, but what I did find is another weird thing. Standing in front of the car, looking at the firewall in front of the passenger seat. A group of 4 connectors, arranged

2 x 2. The upper right wire (tan coloured) on the upper right connector has been cut, and the connector side has been spliced to a much heavier black wire that tie-wrapped to the cable and goes out of sight.

Could this possibly be a work-around for disabling them? Or is it more likely part of the third party remote starter job? For what it's worth the workmanship is nice. Shrink tubed splice, tie-wrapped, etc.

If you think it's worth the try, I'll give putting it back as original a shot and see what happens :) And if you know where that module is and what it looks like please let me know :)

Thanks again, and take care.

Ken

They aren't run at full intensity, no. Chrysler made a poor decision on how to implement them, though, hence the module failures.

Reasonable enough

Haynes and Chilton are garbage. Get the FACTORY book only+

The other thing about factory DRL is it prevents you installing relays and good wiring to help reduce the headlamps' deficient nighttime performance.