My 2006 Town and Country appears to be possessed! I've noticed at night the running lights will come on by themselves, then blink and turn off, then come on again and repeat the process. This lasts a few minutes and then they go off again. No one is around the car, it is not running, and no one is touching the keys. I have no clue how often it does this throughout the night and am hoping to avoid paying $200 for someone to tell me it's a $20 part.

Any thoughts before I call in an exorcist?

 

Holy water! Massive quantities!

Headlight switch, BCM, FCM, IPM, park lamp relay are all players and the signal path goes in that order. Course there's the wiring everybody hates. Could try a wiggle test at the BCM, FCM, IPM connections to try to induce and localize the problem. Something is setting a ground to the park lamp relay coil. Power is always there. It's just waiting for a ground from the FCM.

BCM = Body Control Module - to the left of the brake pedal on the fiewall
FCM = Front Control Module - silver box bolted to the front of the fuse box (IPM)

> IPM has a history of corrosion eating through the connections on the bottom
> Headlight switch has a lifetime warranty for causing flickering or intermittent headlight issues
> Big long shot but try puling the IOD fuse for 2-3 minutes. This will reset the BCM and data bus

Want the wiring diagram? Send me a private message and include an email address. How? Click Raptor 07 at left

 

I noticed this problem happening to our Chrysler about a year ago. One day I was driving to work and the car looked like it was about to turn off. the speedometer went to zero the light went off and then back on. the car started beeping. the engine light came on. actually every light came on. I was so afraid the car was about to stop in the middle of traffic. I kept looking for a recall and nothing yet. now its still happens. I pray everyday that the car doesn't shut down. I wrote this today because I just saw on channel 2 news that they are so many complaints now. I will be complaining to the center of auto safety in the morning. they are trying to get a massive recall for all these problems. Hopefully we will get help soon.

 

As every modern car has everything including the lights microprocessor-controlled, the first thing to do is always disconnect the battery -ve. for a few minutes to reset all the micros. This is the first line of approach with any car nowadays. It's exactly the same reasons that your freeview tuner sometimes needs disconnecting from the power, same as your adsl. modem needs identical teatment. Glitches from whatever power line is in use get stuck in a memory and the wrong instruction is issued, or an instruction is issued without command, (because the binary number/s stored is/are altered). If this is the cause, at least you're not wasting money and feeling humiliated because it's so simple.
The next line of approach is look for corroded contacts and wiring, especially the heavy current wiring to the battery, both ends AND the ground-strap from engine/transaxle to chassis. There is data-bus wiring around the chassis that gets damaged/corroded causing wierd effects, sometimes poor/intermittent/oxididized contacts on microprocessor boards, and there are plenty highly knowledgeable people on this website who can help down to actual location.

Leedsman.