1998 Dodge Caravan electrical wierdness

My '98 Caravan, which up til now has been extremely reliable, now is
dead, and displaying very odd symptoms. My wife had driven it about 45
minutes to a friends house, no problems. 3 hours after she got there,
she went to start the van, and it wouldn't do anything. What was wierd
was when she took the key out of the ignition, there was a clicking
noise under the dash, to the left of the steering wheel. This noise
just continued and wouldn't stop. WIth key in iginition, nothing
worked - no panel, no lights, nothing. The friends husband messed with
it a bit, said at one point the dome light came on, but was going on
and off, and the panel lit up and acted erratically, but each time he
turned the ignition on, everything went deal.

Does this sound like something as simple as a weak battery, or does it
sound more like some bizarre electrical problem, or a failed computer
module of some sort? The battery is just over four years old, and was
a fairly premium model when I bought it. Haven't had any trouble
starting it lately.

 

Hi Robert...

Don't know if the symptoms are sufficiently related to
be of interest, but had weird similar things happening once..
intermittently... one day fine, the next not.

Turned out to be one cell in the battery intermittently
shorted (while hot).

Take care.

Ken

 

Yup! Had the same thing happen on my old 94 Acclaim. Intermittent
short on one cell in the battery. That wuld be the very first thing I
would check.

 

My 1st though would be the battery, age is about right for a
failure, likely one or two cells gone south.
Jump start may not work, try a new or different battery.
Had this on my Cougar, and Astro Van (twice) and Laser, jumps
didn't work, replacing battery fixed problem.

 

Sounds to me like the battery is bad, the external connections to it are
loose/dirty/intermittent, or possibly a bad alternator not allowing the
battery to charge. IN any event, it should be a fairly simple and painless
fix once you know which it is.

Bob

 

Yep, it was a bad battery. Put a new one in, and it cranked up and
everything worked fine.

Only one minor remaining problem: The lights on the A/C, Recirculate,
Rear Wiper and Rear Wiper Intermittent buttons all blink on and off
together. The buttons all do what they're supposed to, you just can't
tell if they're on or off. My wife drove it home, and after a while
(20-30 minutes I think) the lights went off, but next time she stopped
and started it up they went back to blinking.

Any ideas about that?

 

Hi...

Battery voltage has been too low/disconnected too long,
just requires reset... (I think

http://www.allpar.com/fix/codes-climate.html

Ken

 

clean battery posts and cables ends thensee what happens

 

Needs to be calibrated. Just can't remember the right button combo at the
moment...

 

Success! The procedure outlined at allpar.com did the trick -
derblinkenlightzen are now gone!

Many thanks, once again, to everyone who posted.