possible electrical issue

[turbowop]

I swear, the closer this car gets to the 200k mark, the more it doesn't wanna roll that number over on the odometer... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rofl.gif

So I took my car to work today instead of my company van due to the snow and road conditions. I've been working after hours (5pm-1am ish) at a building about 1:15hr away from home. The trip is almost all freeway @ 70mph. Temps around the freezing mark.

Tonight about 20mins into the trip home, the brake and battery idiot lights came on super dim. Normally I would assume alternator failure so I shut off anything electrical I didn't need and turned on the pocketlogger. To my surprise, the battery voltage was showing 14.2 volts, meaning the alternator was still throwing out a good charge. Those lights stayed on for a good half hour and then I noticed they shut off at some point. About 15mins later, they came on again. I figured screw it, and turned my radio and foggies back on. The idiot lights came and went a couple times for the rest of the trip. No other issues though. Car has all heatshields intact around the turbo, BTW.

After I got home, I broke out my multimeter and checked the battery voltage with the car off. It was 12.55 volts.

I'm beginning to think my car is possessed. I wish all these intermittent issues would just stop and something would f***ing break already so I can fix whatever it is needs to be fixed. All this diagnostic work is frustrating.

I snapped a couple pics while driving to show the dim idiot lights and the voltage that the pocketlogger showed. Anybody else had/fixed this or know what could cause it?






Sorry about the pic quality. I had to use my BlackBerry and it was obviously dark.

 

[fuel]

I'm inclined to think it's a dodgy connection or faulty earth somewhere. Though unsure why the brake warning lamp would have come on - usually it's the ABS lamp which comes on when the ABS ECU detects low voltage. If you have another alternator spare, swap it in and see if it still does it.

 

[Terry Posten]

If you pull on the e-brake handle, does the light get brighter?

You may have an issue with the flexible "board" on the back side of the cluster. They have been known to fail after time. See if you can spot any corrosion on that flexible membrane. it will look like darker spots on the traces (usually on the edges creeping toward the middle of each copper trace).

 

[turbowop]

Yeah, if you pull on the e-brake handle, the dash light gets nice and bright.

I'll give the back of the cluster a look.

 

[jepherz]

Ground issue somewhere. Make sure your battery connections are good, etc.

Over Christmas I was up in Minnesota. Woke up one morning to a "dead" car. Jumped it, drove it around and it started stuttering and flashing dash lights. It eventually stalled and wouldn't start. I figured it was for sure the alternator so I stayed up until 3 AM one morning changing it out. Jumped the car and it drove around fine for 30 minutes. Went to start it again and it hadn't charged at all. O'Reilly said the batt and new alternator were fine. So basically, with a good battery and alternator it was still stuttering and flashing dash lights. I ended up putting a generic ground cable on the battery and hooked it up to one of the strut top bolts and it has been fine ever since.

Short story is I replaced a good alternator because I didn't have the appropriate tools to do simple checks with me (multimeter) and the car acted exactly as if the alternator was dead. Oh well, lesson learned.

 

[jepherz]

Quoting turbowop:
Yeah, if you pull on the e-brake handle, the dash light gets nice and bright.

I'll give the back of the cluster a look.



Possibly/probably a ground loop because the ground through the e-brake handle is better than what the dash should be using.