Hi to all,

Till this morning, I have been very pleased with my new 2002 3.3 petrol.

Then mayhem! gauges and dash light up like a Christmas tree, mirrors folding in and out , wipers moving very slowly, beeping from somewhere, doors open warning light flashing, various other clicks and noises and unable to start or turn on ignition lights,

Now the back story, This morning I decided to remove the old analogue tv tuner from rear nearside wheel arch box along with a 300watt inverter which ran a playstation and route 1 AV cable to beneath passenger seat to run small dvd player connected to overhead monitor.

I have read posts here from people who know a lot more than me and they suggest damaged cables in door pillars or under passenger seat, this is my mission tomorrow morning.

My questions are : how do I reset the interior bus if I find any damaged wires and does any one have any other ideas for solution?

Thanks Terry

 

There's always the possibility of a glitched-up microprocessor somewhere. Disconnecting the battery for a few minutes for a hard reset often cures the prob. -- but you'll lose stored errorcodes, that's if they can be trusted anyhow. Make sure you have the radiocode if it's the kind that loses it on battery disconnection. This operation has to be done on many modern cars. There was a similar story to yours a little while back which turned out to be a non-Chrysler addition jamming a busline, so check very carefully what you did.
Please report back if successful.

Leedsman.

 

Like Leedsman said Terry... Look closely around the areas you worked on and after checking maybe pull the battery to clear everything if something you did sent a little to much unwanted juice into one of the. Control modules ...

 

Thanks for all the advice guys.
I revisited all areas that were involved including removing front seat, a good old prod, waggle and push and then coupled with full charge of battery and new bigger cable direct from battery to inverter (advised by expert) all problems disappeared so far!
With all the reading also learnt that lucas leisure battery fitted new by dealer was probably wrong. 'batteries', well thats a whole new can of worms, didnt even know what a spiral cell battery was untill now, I will be searching here for opinions.

 

Two opinions for you :

- spiral's are 3 times overpriced, and unnecessary, just my opinion, others swear by them, did they fit red or yellow ?
- any leisure [little & long] battery is wrong, a starting [lot of CCA & short] is a different animal

The standard current Mopar fit is AGM. Loads of people including those who should know better tell you they are GEL, they are not the electrolyte is Absorbed [into] Glass Mat not as a GEL around the plates. GEL has problems with high charge rates the glass mat is much more tolerant. I use an Bosch S6 type 19 - AGM [non-spiral].

 

A "leisure" lead-acid battery usually means one that can stand deep-discharge, often just called deep-discharge type. Even those are not advised to be discharged to more than 50%, or 12.0volt. The deep-discharge type does not have the spongy lead surface on its -ve plate that the starter lead-acid has, so is limited in its output current, and it's a lot bigger for its a/h capacity. This is due to the limited surface area of the deep-discharge type's non-spongy -ve plate. Different strokes, different batteries. If a so-called professional fitted a "leisure" or deep-discharge type battery in place of a starter battery, he's incompetent. The deep-discharge is for golf trolleys and grandad buggies, and indeed for EV cars, not road vehicles.

With a starter battery, keep it at near 100% charge, ALL THE TIME. This is the way to get a long life out of it. Say, averaging only 75% will get it gradually sulphated with crystaline sulphation which cannot be charged out in the normal way. Thusly after 2 years or so on a car with a constant parasitic load and not used often, the battery will have greatly reduced capacity, eventually resulting in the dreaded "heavy-click" instead of cranking. Keeping the starter battery on constant "float-charge" of around 13.6volt ALL THE TIME will prevent crystalline sulphation and keep it near the desireable 100% charge. I have known lead acids kept on float for 15 years, and still working properly. There is no gassing at this float charge. For AGMs with calcium-calcium alloyed plates, 13.8volt float is advised. Doing this keeps the battery's internal resistance low, thusly "squashing" out the glitches that can affect microprocessor control operation.

Be mindful if buying a new battery that it's been kept up to re. charging. Otherwise you could be getting a partly sulphated battery which has become the crystal-sulphation instead of the easily chargeable-out amorphous sulphation. The more crystal sulphation there is, the more ampere-hours capacity you will lose. At anything up to £200 a time, one needs to be vigilant with lead-acid batteries. And that applies ten times as much with lithium-ion batteries, although these do not sulphate. The Prius' replacement battery is said to be £8000 and will stand only around 500 charge-discharge cycles. A candidate waiting for economic write-off if ever there was one.

Leedsman.