Comment by trollbridge
Comment by trollbridge 5 hours ago
I own a 2002 Grand Cherokee which sometimes will have a 10A+ power drain for no apparent reason. Of course it doesn’t do it when I’ve got my voltmeter on it, except once (when the 10A fuse in my Fluke blew). I resigned myself to unplugging the battery or leaving it plugged in to a high current battery charger at home, and leave it running if I drive it somewhere.
I rented a Jeep Liberty or Compass circa 2018 whose headlights were permanently in DRL mode: couldn’t turn them off or on. Fortunately I didn’t need to drive at night.
In 2017, rented a 300 with 500 miles on it; the infotainment was completely broken, which hosted the controls for the seat heaters and temperature setting. It was well below zero in Minneapolis but we had to drive around with our windows down because the fancy climate system defaulted to max heat blast + max heated seats based on ambient temperature.
Long ago I had a 1996 Neon where the wiring harness started to fail, and the speedometer would stop working. Later on the oil light would come on despite oil pressure being fine. Eventually the entire car just quit running at all at random - nothing but a dim oil light. I sold the car for scrap for $65 since I got tired of being randomly stranded.
So what I’m saying is that it sounds like Chrysler has managed to actually keep doing the same thing for 29 years: electrically unreliable vehicles.
In my personal experience with cars that had strange electrical problems, they tend to be on a bad ground somewhere in the loop. I once took a Chevy S-10 to a place my dad recommended. A guy walked out to ask what the issue was, he nodded, took a step back to look at the truck and asked the year of the truck. He then nodded and said "Yep", and then without looking reached under the dash on the driver's side and tightened a screw by hand. All electrical problems went away. He walked away after politely telling me to have a nice day. I was baffled, and he said it would cost him more in time to write the repair up than he could honestly charge me.
The point is that stable ground connections are notoriously hard on something that by design shakes, rattles, and rolls with all of the vibrating and bouncing on our "modern" streets. It's also a very easy thing to misdiagnose unless you're a mechanic that specializes in automotive electrical systems. It also takes time for new year models to display their warts enough that non-dealer mechanics gain experience repairing them.