Electrical BROO-HA-HA

[vonbrutus]

My wife is driving home the other night and the e-brake light is on. She checks - and it is in fact released. Soon thereafter the battery light lights up. She gets the car home and the next day we go for a drive.Those two lights are still on and will not turn off.After about an hour of driving around doing things I roll up to a red light and HOLY SH*T!!!All four needles are jumping and bouncing around (fuel, temp, tach, and sped). After about 10 seconds of this they drop and are motionless. The car is still running - the gauges aren't registering. While this is happening the dashboard looks like a bloody christmas tree. All the lights are flickering and flashing.We manage to get the car home.I called the local Nissan service dept to book an appt. Over the phone the guy quite confidently says that I need to replace the alternator......a $700 fix.Does anyone have any experience in regards to this kind of problem and if so can you suggest what kind of alternator I should be looking for. I'd like to buy something online and save a few $$.

Thanks,

VB

[MinisterofDOOM]

Up to the point where the gauges went crazy, I was thinking alternator, too.However, even if it were the alternator, it's a pretty simple repair, so you wouldn't need to pay the dealer to do it.

It may be a bad dash cluster controller. It's integrated into the back of the gauge cluster.

[vonbrutus]

Could this problem be related to any of the computer management systems? And on that note - what kind of computer controllers are there on board a 2001 maxima that I may want to consider have someone look at?What about moisture getting into some of the electrical connections? We did drive through some pretty awful rain about a week and half ago.

Cheers,

VB

[audtatious]

Could be anything. First thing to do is crank the car and test the alternator before trying to further troubleshoot as that is an easy task without any real effort

[vonbrutus]

Could this be related to the DTRL control unit? Seems like a long shot to me but when we had our pre-inspection done on the car last spring they made a note saying this was faulty and needed to be checked.I just took the car out for a burn and none of the aforementioned problems are present. The display is good and none of the lights are on.Starting to think that I may want to sell or trade in the car as opposed to chasing this problem.A little bummed at this point.

VB

[the converted]

In all honesty it just sounds like a bad ground. If you have an FSM just check and see where all the ground points are. This is the crapy stuff that dealers will charge you both arms and legs to find.

[the converted]

Took a look at the FSM for an 03 (should be pretty close to yours) and there's two grounds that I'd look at. The easy one to get at is above the fuse box. The other one is a little harder to get two without pulling the dash but its just behind the diagonal reinforcing beam on the drivers side.

[Sentientbydesign]

Go to an Autozone and have them rule out your battery and alternator. They have free testing equipment.

You might also use their OBDII equipment to check if you have any CEL codes on the computer.

Doing those two things will wipe away a huge chunk of guessing.

You might also do a quick visual of the belts. I'm sure this isn't your problem, but just last week my idler pulley flew off on the freeway (my fault) and both my brake light and battery light came on.