Our 14 Town & Country died when SWMBO was 2 blocks from her office at lunch last Thursday. Friday morning it died as she was backing out of the garage. It restarted immediately both times & ran fine otherwise.
Based on google I cleaned the throttle body yesterday. When I tried to start it afterwards, the gauges on the dash illuminated, but it took about 6-seconds before it actually cranked. It started & drove fine afterwards.
This morning it took 3 attempts for it to start. The dash lit up, but it wouldn’t crank. Then it seemed fine. I ran errands and it started fine after the next stop. At the last stop it wouldn’t crank at all. Ever.
The red dot for the security system is flashing. I had my daughter bring SWMBO’s key to me, but it still wouldn’t start. I tried various combinations of locking/unlocking it & disconnecting the battery, but still no luck.
Google says it takes the dealer to reacquaint the keys with the BCM. Do I have any other options before towing it to a random dealer & bending over?
759NRNG
SuperDork
11/4/18 4:23 p.m.
probably not......err have you changed the batteries in the fob lately.......the 'V' acted up awhile ago but fresh batts came to the rescue......greetings from Birmingham Al
Sounds like the SKIM/ VTSS failed or both keys are bad (seen it more than once). Some local shops can handle the programming but not all. Either way, it should be checked before putting on nonreturnable parts.
Paul B
In reply to Donebrokeit :
Is the SKIM a separate module?
I ended up having it towed to the dealer late Monday afternoon. They called this morning & asked me to bring them the 2nd key, then called a bit ago saying it was done. $385 later they said it needed reprogrammed 3x to recognize the keys - I’ll ask for more details on exactly what they reprogrammed when I pick it up after work.
It certainly doesn’t instill much confidence in me that it’s truly fixed & won’t have a BCM failure soon though.
Is the main vehicle battery OK? Sometimes when they fail internally it can appear as all kinds of different electrical gremlins because they short a section of cells which drops voltage, then the car hits a bump and the voltage comes back... etc. This kind of environment can freak out the ECU, BCM and any other brain that is on board.
In reply to Sparkydog :
I replaced it this spring.
Here’s the official diagnosis. With “shop supplies” it was $408.
