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2001 Impala electrical
hammerdog1
Member Posts: 5
Have problems with 2001 Impala. For example
interior lights flashing
Blinkers speradic
gauges flickering or not working
Numerous gauges security lights
door ajar speradic
trunk will open driving down the street.
Trac off light on
or no lights or gauges in the dash are speradic
And thats when the radio is dead.
heat gauge not working is speradic and the fans will stay running.
now if it won't start with the key i can start it with the command start button. Its possessed. Starting to regret buying.
Just had a new ignition put in. Didn't help still doing crazy thing. Please help us figure this out.
0
Answers
We took it to the garage in town. They replaced the ignition switch not the cylinder . $411.00 Later. It worked for a day not flashers thou. Than it started all over again. Now I drove to Medicine Hat to a GM garage. They wanted to change the ignition switch. Put the kibosh on that already tried that. So the put on computer box thing. Now $1200.00 worth of O2 Sensor, flasher module , BCM module and programmed. Went to pick up yesterday and told it's working good. So we tried to start it and it won't start. So they still have it at the garage. We are waiting to heard what they think it is now. We checked the battery it wears good. Any ideas from experience is well excepted . Thanks
Even now without testing and proving what is going on with each reported symptom, nobody really knows. Ignition switch failures on these are common and it may well have been part of the trouble and that's what makes this whole scenario tough. It could easily have been "a problem" but when other issues remain it then gets treated as if it was a mistake because what ever issues happen to remain are now labeled as "the problem".
The trunk opening itself has more than one potential cause. The most common one however is system voltage drops and the BCM (body computer) starts to shut down but then wakes back up repeatedly. The pulses in system power caused by that result in some strange behavior and the trunk popping is one of those.
The security system having to be retrained could be caused by BCM power, internal BCM, the pass lock sensor, and or it's harness connections.
The check engine light could easily have been turning on because the PCM (powertrain control module) was detecting a failure (the O2 sensor?) that caused it to set a trouble code(s) so it commanded the instrument cluster to turn the light on. The instrument cluster can also turn on the check engine light if it loses communication with the PCM, or if the cluster itself happens to be failing or having power supply issues.
The need to jump start this over and over again suggests that either the charging system wasn't working correctly, there are poor connections in the system, or that there is a drain on the system when the car is turned off. The report of the interior lights flashing on/off with the door ajar light is more than likely a failing door ajar switch which could easily be a random parasitic drain which would result in the battery being dead from time to time.
What ever is causing the no-start this time needs to be analyzed with the first step being to forget all of the other symptoms or repairs. It's a mistake to associate any one problem to any others before it is analyzed and proven. It would be an even bigger mistake to guess a cause because we don't even know if it is cranking the engine or not. We don't know if it is cranking if it is getting spark, fuel pressure, or injection pulse.