Chrysler Repair: 1999 Town and Country battery replacement precautions, jumper wires, cable clamps

Question
Kevin:
I will be replacing the battery in my wife's T&C minvan soon and have a question regarding the replacement. A while back the battery was drained and the car was dead. after charging the battery several of the displays and LED's beagan to flash. Our dealer reset something to make it stop (no charge) but told us it would be $$$ to do it again. is there something special I need to do whaen replacing the battery to insure the computers stay happy? Thank you!

Answer
Hi Scott,
I checked my '98 shop manual and found no instruction for special precautions. My thought is that it would be good practice to have the van totally shut down for about a half hour before disconnecting the battery because some of the control modules continue to draw current for about 20 minutes after driving or opening/closing doors, etc.
The other idea, though it is tricky to do safely, is to hook the new battery up in parallel with the battery cable clamps by means of jumper wires and then remove and replace the battery in such a way as to never totally lose voltage. The hazard is a short cirucit if one of positive connections should accidentally ground if it came loose from one of the batteries while still connected at its other battery. It may be too risky to try this maneuver.
I am not sure why you experienced the earlier problem. It may have been a normal response to a too low voltage on the system, but other than disconnecting and reconnecting the battery after a 20 minute wait I can't think of any way to "reset" the problems that you mentioned.
Disconnecting the battery may cause a "self-test" to begin in the AC control module, and the powertrain controller will notice that it has lost its voltage supply and set a code in the memory to that effect. But the code will unltimately self-erase after 50 key cycles; or the dealer can erase the code with a diagnostic reader. But in any case if the van runs, such codes and flashing are not a cause for concern.
Roland