hi everybody, and I know its a day late, but MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

I have a question to ask of you all...this morning i took my son for a ride in our 2001 coupe, and when we hit a very small bump in the road, some warning lights came on and the dash said "service vehicle soon, low tire, service tire monitoring system, service active handling system"....my first reaction was that maybe i should just be careful to avoid thatbump in the future, and i pulled over, shut the car down, restarted, and everything was fine. we went on our way. then, after one stop, we got back in the car, and barely got started, when the guages did all kinds of weird things, like saying "low fuel, service active handling, service vehicle soon, reduced engine power, service active handling" etc, etc, and the radio even went off temporarily....we've owned this car for nine months or so now, and never had any problems with it (except for tire sensors going out, which have been replaced and work fine). we just got home, and i checked the codes. now i'm not sure how many of those codes were already in there, but they all read as "H", meaning history? there were several codes, spreading across all categories, and all had soemthing to do with loss of communication or "circuit shorted"....being the intuitive one that i am, i sort of thought that maybe my battery was just going out or something, and opened the hood. the first thing i did was try to "jiggle" it around to see how secured it was, and visually check for any acid leaks around the bottom...it all looked good, but the battery is a bit loose. i further noticed that the negative battery terminal can easily be rotate by hand, its a bit loose....so, the big question, can a loose battery connection cause my guages and radio to go dead, and all of these random codes to pop up? if not, i'm thinking it could be a much more serious issue....anybody have any ideas??? thanks!

 

yes a bad connection can drive the ECM crazy.you say ya barely got it started.what do ya mean ?slow turning over,no turning over cranking ok but wont start ?fully charge the batt. then test it.H codes are history as in the ECM saw something now its ok for now.C code are current codes that can trigger a CEL.c5,s are comon for an ABS light when hitting a bump.aways fix C codes first.H codes are useful in deep diagnosis

 

Ok, maybe i stated that wrong, it started fine, but we barely got moving in the parking lot (didn't hit any bumps or anything) and the gauges went crazy again. I killed it, restarted, and again, it was fine. This morning I dismantled one of the ground boxes that was bolted to the chassis, and reassembled. i didn't have a wire brush or anything to clean the connectors with, just sort of dissasembled and reassembled. I've driven it three times since doing this, with no crazy gauges or anything. I've seen other threads where people talk about ground issues causing this craziness in the gauges. Thought it couldn't hurt to atleast try and clean the two near the headlights, that are easy to get to. I know the problem didn't happen today, but I also thought I'd have the battery checked, just in case....any other thoughts, anybody???

 

I'm assuming you've already read this?

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/showthread.php?t=896875

From what I've seen on the various C5 forums, there are two probable causes of weird electrical glitches - corroded ground/wire harness connections or the driver's door wires' intermittant shorting.

Dave

 

yeah i read this thread and another one or two i found. seems like the problem usually stems from mods, and a wire left randomly somewhere, or simply the ground connections getting nasty. i plan on intentionally driving the car around a bit today, to see if the problem comes back or not!

 

well, the crazy gauge thing happened again this morning, two or three times, randomly. each time, i would restart and it'd be fine.

i stopped in at the local autozone and had the battery checked, it looked ok. so i got a wire brush and some tools and carefully dismantled BOTH of the front ground harnesses, just behind the headlights, and scrubbed with teh brush. there was some flaky stuff on a couple of the prongs, but for the most part, they looked ok. i went ahead and scraped around the bolt a bit, to make sure all metal still had good contact. hopefully this will fix the random erratic gauge glitch.

Dave, you say there is sometimes a driver's door wiring short? this car has never had any problems with electrical that i know of, is that usually a hard thing to diagnose? I will say that sometimes ( as with most C5's i guess) after a long rainy period, i'll notice some dampness in the interior, as if the windows or top have leaked slightly...