1998 Dodge Caravan electrical wierdness

(forgive me if you read my identical post on rec.auto-makers.dodge)

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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well step one Would be to clean battery posts and make sure the battery is full

Reply to
fireater

Could be a bad battery and the first thing to do would be to load test it. if it wont charge replace it.

Glenn Beasley Chrysler Tech

Reply to
maxpower

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?

So I don't have to keep up two threads, anyone interested can follow it here:

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Many thanks to all who replied so quickly!

Reply to
robert.macnutt

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