Posts Tagged Electrical
What Are Electrical Diagnostics for Your Car
Posted on October 5, 2011 | Automotive Repair.
Cars are very high tech today. There is no doubt that a computer runs a lot of sensors on the car, from the oil pressure to the tire pressure to how close an object is to a car. Even if you don’t have a new car, there are electrical components to your car that need a diagnosis on occasion. What are some of those electronics?
The windshield wipers on an older car are electronic. They have intermittent control, in certain vehicles there is a rear wiper. All of the wipers have a switch that controls their speed. What happens if the speed goes haywire and doesn’t respond to where you turn it? You have some type of short in the circuit.
Other problems that can be electrical stem from the battery. Sure, you need gas to run your car, but if the battery won’t turn over the engine to start it, you won’t ever need that gas. A technician can look at your car and figure out why the circuits on your battery aren’t connected right or tight and get the problem fixed. Coming out from class or work in the dark and having a car that won’t start is no fun.
No matter what type of problem you are having with the car because of an electrical problem, there are a few ways to diagnose it. When a light comes on your dashboard to check the engine and you don’t hear anything wrong, you might be stumped. You can take the car in to an auto parts store or even to the dealership and they have a device you can connect the car up to.
The auto parts store will allow you to do it yourself, since they aren’t authorized to make a diagnosis on your car. The dealership will perform this, since they can fix your car. But what the contraption is is a box with a few wires. The wires connect to wires underneath the steering column inside of your vehicle. Once the part is connected, it will read the car’s computer and be able to tell exactly what code caused the light to come on in the car. The code will be a sensor that is off, a belt going bad or some other circuit that is mis-firing within the engine or other place on your car. Once you know the code, you can have the item repaired and be back on your way.
Car Electrical System Maintenance
Posted on May 13, 2011 | Automotive Repair.
The first sign you will usually get of an electrical failure happening is a warning light coming on in your car’s instrument panel. This can be a simple alternator light, as in older cars, or an LCD panel giving off a fault code. If the fault is bad enough, you will also notice dimming headlights or the instrument panel lights flickering.
If your car is in decent shape in the fist place and is being properly maintained, your battery’s reserve capacity should give you enough power to at least bring the vehicle to the side of the road safely, or even take you to the nearest gas or service station. When this happens, and you can tell that only the charging systems has failed, shut off all unnecessary electrical loads, such as the aircon, radio, chargers, etc. If there is a noise coming from your engine compartment, you will have to stop the car to check if a loose belt or component is rubbing or hitting another engine part. Coinciding with the warning lights on the dash will be a dimming of your headlights, in case you are driving at night.
In case you notice that only the headlights are dimming and there are no warning lights or indicator codes turning on in the instrument panel, this means that the charging system is the likely culprit. The alternator which keeps the battery charged during driving has a set of carbon brushes in it that wear out over time. When your car’s headlights dim, it has come to the point where the carbon brushes are worn and need to be replaced. It can also be the alternator’s regulator that has gone on the blink that is causing a charging system failure. Again, reduce the electrical load and take your car in for service as soon as possible.
Sometimes, corrosion builds up in the electrical contacts, not just in the batteries, but where the negative cable connects to the car body, or the positive cable connecting to the car’s starter. These little things can actually cause intermittent failures that are random and very difficult to trace, especially with newer cars whose electronic components rely on small changes in system voltage to work.
With today’s cars employing more sophisticated electronics, a lot of things can go wrong when individual control modules fail. Since modern cars run off a common data bus, errant voltages can feed wrong signals to the wrong modules, resulting in failure that can be difficult to trace without the aid of a diagnostic module. In situations like these, it is best to drive on to a safe place, if possible, and ask for help. Fortunately, intermittent faults like these rarely produce sudden failures that leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere. If your car throws a fault code, or your alternator light blinks on, don’t delay service on your electrical system.