Chrysler Repair: EATX Relay clicking, chrysler town and country, differential unit

Question
I have a 1999 Chrysler Town and COuntry 3.8L  van.  The engine suddenly shutoff on me yesterday.  There is a clicking sound and vibration coming from beneath the EATX auto shutdown relay fuse.  When we wiggled the OTHER Auto shutdown relay fuse engine started briefly then quit.  I put in new rely fuses at both the EATX slot and Auto Shutdown spot.  What exactly is the EATX rely for anyway?  I am trying to do research for my mechanic - I am owner THANKS

Answer
Hi Morgan,
I need to clarify that your use of the term 'fuse' is confusing me. The clicking sounds are coming from the relays themselves, I believe as they are actually electically operated switches, not fuses. The fuses that involve the circuits of which you speak are # 15 for the etax and # 17 for the engine which are involved with their respective relays to power those relays. The fuses are silent, they either conduct or they are blown (open). The fuses I listed are on the other side of the box from the relays.
That being said, the relays will click (opening or closing) under the control of the computers which look at the varius inputs from sensors and decide whether the circuit in question should be switched 'on' or not. The etax is the acronym for electronic transaxle, basically the transmission/differential unit that drives the two half axles.
Both relays have to be closed for the engine to start and  for the transmission to transmit power to the wheels (in anything other than 2nd gear, which is the fallback function of the etax when the relay is open due to a detected problem seen by the transmission computer...that default condition when it will only run in 2nd gear is called 'limp-in mode').
The appropriate action now would be to find out what problem (fault) the computers are seeing which is causing them to click open rather than stay closed. If the relays are actually vibrating, that typically is caused by the battery voltage being compromised to such a low level that the power to operate the relay switch is not sufficient to keep it closed, so it clicks 'open' and then the relay tries again to close, etc., etc. If that were the present situation, I would try to charge the battery with a plug-in charger, or jump a known good battery to your van's battery to sustain a high enough voltage that the relays won't cycle that way. It also could be a short circuit that is draining the battery voltage down so if jumping doesn't help, that would be the likely reason.
There may be an underlying problem which a fault code readout would reveal. There is a self-diagnostic capability built-in to the computers. Code numbers can often be found by using the ignition switch: turn the key:"on-off-on-off-on and leave on", doing that in 5 seconds or less elapsed time. Then watch the odometer window of the cluster to see if the mileage reading changes to show 4-digit numbers, preceded by a P, which would be the fault codes. Tell me what those are and we can go on from there. However with all the clicking going on, this may be impaired. So try to get the battery voltage raised by the jumping or re-charging of your vehicle's battery, and also try to do the code readout.
Roland
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