QuestionQUESTION: My baby, a 97 Town and Country LXi, just received a battery charge at Sears. I started to drive away and came back because I saw the rear wiper lights were flashing. The techs here have no clue. Can you help so that I can go home to my kids? Thanks!
ANSWER: Hi Andrea.
The rear wiper light flashing alone, indicates that there is nothing wrong with the heater/ac system, which decided to run a test by itself when the battery was being dealt with and the test found there to be nothing wrong. To get it to stop you simply push the rear wiper switch and it should stop.
Roland
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QUESTION: Wow, thank you for getting back to me so fast! The switches that blink are the continuous and intermittent rear wiper switches and the a/c and recirculation switches. So, for example, I can tell the a/c is on by the type of air coming out but that light blinks instead of staying on for a/c. The only other thing that changed is the time on my clock, all other settings remained fine and the tech told me he used something while charging the battery (outside the car) to keep the settings. Thanks to you, I was able to drive it home from Sears and I was hoping that the blinking would just stop on it's own after a couple of miles but it didn't. Both the tech and I played with all the switches to no avail.
ANSWER: With all 4 lights flashing at once, or maybe you meant, two at once then the other two? that sounds like it is still trying to do its self-test routine. Either let it run until only the rear wiper is blinking, then push Rear Wiper to 'exit' the test or if that doesn't work, then I would disconnect the battery (you will have to reset the radio and clock, and see what it does then. Let me know if you still can't 'clear' the blinking.
Roland
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QUESTION: All 4 lights blink in unison. And, this morning, my car took 3 turns to start, so now I'm thinking that something wasn't connected properly (isn't it just the 2 cables?). I can't imagine that my starter just happened to stop working properly. I'm going to take it back to Sears today and ask them to disconnect the battery and reconnect it again - is that reasonable?
Thanks so much for your help!
AnswerHi Andrea,
I'm not clear what you mean by 'three turns to start': the starter motor wouldn't respond or the motor cranked but the engine would catch and run? They could disconnect the battery, then touch the two cable ends together for 30 seconds which may reset the computerized modules in what is called 'soft reset', and then reattach to the battery. Let me know if that helps.
Roland
PS The 4 lights blinking simultaneously is characteristic of one stage of the self-diagnostic testing. But it should stop after 5 seconds. You could try re-starting the tests:
With the engine running, set the blower on high, set mode to panel, open all AC outlets, set temperature to cold, then depress Wash and Rear Wiper simultaneously for 5 seconds, which is usually the point where all 4 lights start blinking, but only for 5 seconds. The it runs two tests during which first the rear wiper and intermittant flash alternately, then second the AC and recirc flash alternately. Finally if the tests are passed without fault the rear wiper alone will flash. You cancel that single LED flashing by pushing the rear wiper button. If one of the tests fails, then there are a complex series of different flashing behavior that requires a lengthy written copy to understand. I can xerox copy and mail that to you if necessary.
