Alpine
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Fort Wayne, IN
Here's the full (unabridged) story. My sister's 96 XJ died on her and refused to start a couple of weeks ago. From what she described, it sounded like her battery.
So I ran to Advance & bought an Optima and stuck it in our Liberty, and installed the battery from the Liberty into her XJ. It started right up & seemed fine. She drove it to work & jump started another one of her friends.
Later on that night, she called me and said it again refused to start. I ran out & charged the battery back up. It appeared to start up ok, but the voltage guage was reading around 11 volts (?). When I turned on her headlights, radio, heater, wipers, etc you could watch the voltage guage slowly creep down and then hover around 8 volts or so.
I pulled the battery cable off when the engine was running, and the voltage guage read around 8 volts, yet the engine kept running. The alternator wasn't bad, but seemed kind of weak. I drove it to my house & ripped her alternator out (not fun), brought it to Advance & bought a new (reman) one.
I slapped it in, and put everything back together. It started right up, and was charging around 11 volts again (I wasn't very happy). I turned on the headlights, the blower motor, the wipers, the radio, and whatever else I could turn on electically and watched the voltage gauge slowly creep down again. I could actually watch the headlights get slowly dimmer. During this process, I removed one of the battery connector terminals & noticed that the headlights (as well as everything else illuminated) seemed to flicker?
Since it was in my garage, I put my battery / alt load tester on it. Both tested good when connected together. The battery load tested good by itself, and the alternator gave me a really funny reading testing by itself -- the needle cycled quickly between 8 volts and 18 volts. So.. I guessed it could be the regulator?
After a bit of research, and to my dismay, I found that the regulator is actually part of the computer (Whose retarded idea was that?). I spoke with my Mom's husband (who is actually footing the bill for all of this), and told him what was going on. We decided to take it to a stealership (Glenbrook Dodge to be precise) to have them run a full diag on the computer so we would know for sure.
To spare this thread the details, I'm $85.00 poorer, and they "couldn't reproduce the problem". They said they ran a diagnostics on it, and didn't find a single problem, and they said it was chargine perfectly. When I got there, I walked the technician out to the vehicle and was able to reproduce the problem immediately. His response was "It's probably the PCM.." I decided not to have them touch it anymore and continue troubleshooting this myself.
I priced out PCMs for around $250. Before I dump the cash into one of those, I'd like to be really sure that's what it is. This weekend I'm going to pull the codes myself, & do some other basic maintenance on it. Before I drop the $$ on a new PCM, does anybody else have anything else I could try? Or do you guys think it's the PCM?
Thanks in advance...
[Edit - It has a 4.0L, A/C, and an auto trans]
So I ran to Advance & bought an Optima and stuck it in our Liberty, and installed the battery from the Liberty into her XJ. It started right up & seemed fine. She drove it to work & jump started another one of her friends.
Later on that night, she called me and said it again refused to start. I ran out & charged the battery back up. It appeared to start up ok, but the voltage guage was reading around 11 volts (?). When I turned on her headlights, radio, heater, wipers, etc you could watch the voltage guage slowly creep down and then hover around 8 volts or so.
I pulled the battery cable off when the engine was running, and the voltage guage read around 8 volts, yet the engine kept running. The alternator wasn't bad, but seemed kind of weak. I drove it to my house & ripped her alternator out (not fun), brought it to Advance & bought a new (reman) one.
I slapped it in, and put everything back together. It started right up, and was charging around 11 volts again (I wasn't very happy). I turned on the headlights, the blower motor, the wipers, the radio, and whatever else I could turn on electically and watched the voltage gauge slowly creep down again. I could actually watch the headlights get slowly dimmer. During this process, I removed one of the battery connector terminals & noticed that the headlights (as well as everything else illuminated) seemed to flicker?
Since it was in my garage, I put my battery / alt load tester on it. Both tested good when connected together. The battery load tested good by itself, and the alternator gave me a really funny reading testing by itself -- the needle cycled quickly between 8 volts and 18 volts. So.. I guessed it could be the regulator?
After a bit of research, and to my dismay, I found that the regulator is actually part of the computer (Whose retarded idea was that?). I spoke with my Mom's husband (who is actually footing the bill for all of this), and told him what was going on. We decided to take it to a stealership (Glenbrook Dodge to be precise) to have them run a full diag on the computer so we would know for sure.
To spare this thread the details, I'm $85.00 poorer, and they "couldn't reproduce the problem". They said they ran a diagnostics on it, and didn't find a single problem, and they said it was chargine perfectly. When I got there, I walked the technician out to the vehicle and was able to reproduce the problem immediately. His response was "It's probably the PCM.." I decided not to have them touch it anymore and continue troubleshooting this myself.
I priced out PCMs for around $250. Before I dump the cash into one of those, I'd like to be really sure that's what it is. This weekend I'm going to pull the codes myself, & do some other basic maintenance on it. Before I drop the $$ on a new PCM, does anybody else have anything else I could try? Or do you guys think it's the PCM?
Thanks in advance...
[Edit - It has a 4.0L, A/C, and an auto trans]