While driving today and coming up to a stoplight ALL my dashboard needle indicators dropped and the van became unresponsive. The engine was still running, but I had no power steering or brakes. Luckily, I was able to stop the vehicle nearly avoiding a head on collision. After the fiasco, a simple restart brought everything "back to life" and as normal I drove home. Very scary.

This vehicle has about 110K miles on it and unfortunately is out of both factory and extended warranties. Something similar happened with it many miles and a few years ago. It was doing the "pinball" thing while stopped and idling at a light. The gauges going all crazy and engine would die. At that time, the dealer immediately tried to pin blame on a simple power inverter I had wired to the battery. Ironically, I still have the same inverter wired for the past 5K miles or so. I never bought that story, and it still makes no sense that the vehicle could go "Toyota berserk" if you happen to have some inverter or other appliance wired to your battery or lighter.

Is there some factory recall on this vehicle? What if anything can I do about this? I feel nervous driving it for fear if it "dies" again I'll lose control and crash. I still have about 4 payments due on this van thru Chrysler finance! ((

Thanks much for any advice.

 

Took the van over to Walmart to have them test the battery. Battery tested OK, but the engine died after running about 30 seconds with the positive terminal disconnected. The Walmart guy said this is a sure sign of a bad alternator. This is making sense , since the truck went crazy on me again while accelerating rapidly on the freeway. I had to pull over , turn it off, etc. Is this a bad alternator? If so, what should i replace it with?

 

Well, I replaced the battery with a new one even though my old battery tested OK with about 680 cranking amps while disco'd from the vehicle. According to one of the mechanics at Pep Boys, the regulator & computer is VERY sensitive to a battery even slightly bad or aged. This does make sense as I haven't had the problem since replacing the battery about 3 years ago. Lucky for me, I was literally within days of the expiration of the battery warranty. Also, disconnecting the battery while running is apparently a NO NO on these newer vehicles. Apparently, the computer system requires the battery to run properly and you could break it by disconnecting the battery?

So far, driving has produced no further problems since replacing the battery. I really wish this forum were more helpful at times. I can't believe this thread has gotten ZERO replies since I posted it. Oh well Hopefully this record will help others out in the future.

 

Sorry no one has responded. this is the 1st time I have seen it and I am on every day. Who unhooked the bat cable and let the car run.. the Pep Boy guy? This a No No. I don't seem to get much more the 2.5 years out of the batteries in my Van. The second was an interstate which I thought would have lasted longer but not much more than the factory. I now have the Costco battery so we will see how that does. Before our battery went, the interior lights could not be left on, the gauges would peg every so often etc. since, then, no issues. Hope you are all set now.

Also.. do you run the inverter with the van off a lot?

 

While driving yesterday, my gagues also went berserk: They went UP all the way then DOWN completely, then every light in the dash came on. Luckily, the van did not lose power (thankfully, driving during snowstorm on major interstate).

I stopped as quickly as I reasonably could, then shut off the engine. It happened again soon after restarting. One more time restarting, then no more problems.

Hopefully mine is also a simple battery issue! Will see and reply with results.

 

Forgot to reply: It was a battery issue.