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.

1998 Dodge Caravan electrical wierdness
 

1998 Dodge Caravan electrical wierdness
 

> wrote in message
ups.com...
> (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.
>

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

1998 Dodge Caravan electrical wierdness
 

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
he

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...a34119bdb1e16?

Many thanks to all who replied so quickly!