Chrysler Repair: 01 Dodge Grand Caravan: smell of solder/warning lights come on, dodge grand caravan, odometer reading

Question
While driving at 60 mph on highway smelled a hot solder smell for a moment then all warning lights came on and went off immediately. Pulled off the road to check fan belt and check for any leaks. Was able to restart and return five miles home with no further incident and no odor and the car ran fine. The light thing happened once before about a year ago. The momentary hot solder smell concerns me. Any ideas as to the cause or what this may be leading up to?

Answer
Hi Chris,
If it was all the warning lights, my first thought is that there is a short circuit of current to ground of some sort inside the cluster which overheated a solder joint. These circuits are electronic so there is no detail as to exactly how they work shown in the manual or an explanation about what would cause all the warning lights to come on. The fuse that powers the lights is 20 amps so there could be a reasonably large current flow (240 watts of power) without blowing the fuse. That could very well heat up a solder joint through which it was flowing. That fuse also powers the hazard lights via the body control module. If there was no loss of engine power or other indication of change in the actual operation of the vehicle then it is probably confined to the cluster circuit itself and not related to anyother circuit, except:
A second thought is that you may have a water leak below the windshield that is dripping down on the body computer which is located on the fire wall near the brake pedal mechanism. If water got on the plugs of the body control it could have caused a short circuit. Was it raining then or recently or did you wash the vehicle before this happened?
Because there is some self-diagnostic capability in the vehicle you might first try turning the ignition key:"on-off-on-off-on and leave on" doing that in 5 seconds or less elapsed time. Then watch the odometer reading to see if it changes from mileage to show a 4-digit number prefaced by a P. Let me know if so and we'll see what that tells us.
Roland
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