1994 Intrepid electrical-help please.

I have heard that these cars have a long list of electrical problems, but I
wanted to bounce mine off of you good people to see if I am heading in the
right direction.

I seem to loose part or all of my instument panel and the ability to shift
gears. 99% of the time it is when I first engage it. I will have functions
on the panel or partial functions that do not work right (PRNDL and airbag
all lit)

Sometimes after a few minutes after starting , everthing just comes alive
again.

Is this the onboard computer block or could it be something else?

Thanks in advance for any help and feel free to talk "techno", I am an
electronics technician but not in the automotive area. Thanks again

 

If the first gen. is as similar mechanically and electrically to the 2nd
gen as I think it is, it sounds like a classic symptom of the battery
going south. Used to be that alternators would pretty much keep things
working in spite of a bad battery once the engine was running, but
apparently these systems protect the alternator from overload when the
battery gets beyond a certain point, and the result is that the
operating voltages drop below the thresholds required to keep things
like the sensors and dash lights operating properly when the battery
gets weak.

Alternator problems on these cars are very rare, and what you describe
sounds like a bad battery for these cars.

If you have a volt/multimeter, measure the voltage at the battery both
with the engine off and with it running with lights and inside fan offf,
and then with lights and inside fan running full speed. Should see
right around 12 volts for the first scenario, and around 13.2 to 14.8
volts for the last two.

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")

 

Does wiggling the key in the ignition do anything? Maybe there are some bad
contacts in the ignition switch.

 

Highest probability is an ignition switch. 93's and 94's had a bunch of
switch failures. The switch sticks between start and run.

Bill

 

Well, I thank everyone who responded to my post and to those people who have
had this type of problem previously and posted about it.

After checking the grounds and verifying that they were o.k. I headed for
the ignition console. (I knew it was not the battery because that was
replaced a month ago for other reasons.)

I disassembled the covers (No easy task) and located the main electrical
connector on the left hand side of the steering column. Just by giving it a
nudge inwards, my instrument console came back to life.Funny , I could
jiggle it around and simulate all the various forms of the problems I was
having.

I thought it just may be poor connections so I removed the connector and
gave it and the socket a good cleaning....No luck.

So it looks like the cam or switchs themselves inside the assembly are worn
out. I will pick up another one tomorrow (On holiday's) and that will be my
little driveway project.

Thanks again to everyone that responded and I hope my post helps someone
else out.

 

Car has multiple grounds which need to be checked.

 

before any parts are bought have the codes pulled from the bcm and the abs unit
if you have abs then have codes pulled from the trans module then use that info
to start troubleshooting it code be a sim-ple red wire with a white tracer
that feeds power to all the modules