Frustrated

[doncorleone77]

Okay, here's the problem that I keep having that noone can seem to diagnose. I'm driving down the street, here a chime, the check advancetrak light comes on along with the abs light. The radio dies, the car starts to sputter & eventually dies. I try to restrart it & my batteries dead.
Now I take my car to a starter/alternator shop because I think it's my alternator, they say my alternator is charging correctly. I then take it to an auto electric place, same thing they say your alternator is working correctly & we can't find any problem. Meanwhile, I get my battery charged, slap it in the car & can drive around for weeks, even months before I have this problem again. ( Have even used different batteries)
I need help, what is it? It's driving me nuts, am I the only one who's ever had this problem? Could my alternator be playing with me?

 

[Jim Henderson]

Could be all kinds of things. Bad ground, loose connection, bad sensors, a computer problem.

A wild guess is that maybe your ABS sensors are going bad which would cause ABS and Advantrak problems. Alternatively the computer reading thoses codes could be flakey.

Sounds like you will need to take it in to a good shop that can do comprehensive diagnostics. Did anyone pull computer codes?

Was your battery physically dead? Or did the engine just not want to start? If the battery was dead then I would suspect alternator(which was OK) or a bad internal connection in the battery which is hard to find, or corrosion which I would expect an electrical shop to find easily. Or maybe by some weird design the computer somehow controls the charge circuit which would point agin to the computer getting flakey.

Sounds most likely to me to be a bad connection or ground. This can be really fiun to diagnose which means it can get expensive. If it was me, I would find a wiring diagram, don't ask me where, I am too new to the LS to know. I would then trace all the cables that have to do with ABS, and the main computer cables and unplug, inspect, grease if needed and plug back in. Then I would clean all grounds that affect the computer, and I would wire brush the battery terminals. This may or may not fix it but it may eliminate some of the variables.

Good Luck,

Jim Henderson

 

[doncorleone77]

I appreciate it.
I will try the things you suggetsed & see what happens, I'll let you know.

Could be all kinds of things. Bad ground, loose connection, bad sensors, a computer problem.

A wild guess is that maybe your ABS sensors are going bad which would cause ABS and Advantrak problems. Alternatively the computer reading thoses codes could be flakey.

Sounds like you will need to take it in to a good shop that can do comprehensive diagnostics. Did anyone pull computer codes?

Was your battery physically dead? Or did the engine just not want to start? If the battery was dead then I would suspect alternator(which was OK) or a bad internal connection in the battery which is hard to find, or corrosion which I would expect an electrical shop to find easily. Or maybe by some weird design the computer somehow controls the charge circuit which would point agin to the computer getting flakey.

Sounds most likely to me to be a bad connection or ground. This can be really fiun to diagnose which means it can get expensive. If it was me, I would find a wiring diagram, don't ask me where, I am too new to the LS to know. I would then trace all the cables that have to do with ABS, and the main computer cables and unplug, inspect, grease if needed and plug back in. Then I would clean all grounds that affect the computer, and I would wire brush the battery terminals. This may or may not fix it but it may eliminate some of the variables.

Good Luck,

Jim Henderson