Coil pack

Go ahead, but it is not going to solve anything. Remember, the biggest, strongest, baddest battery in the world is only guaranteed to crank the engine fast enough to start after sitting for three weeks. Longer than that and the battery can not be blamed for a failure to start.

As a side note, I buy a lot of batteries to run lights and a radio display at an old car show swap meet. I get all of mine from a battery store where I can buy "reconditioned" batteries for $35.00. These could have just been in stock too long and they want to get rid of them, or, more commonly, someone returned a new battery because it didn't solve their problem. They cannot sell it as new now, so they call it "reconditioned" instead of "used". I take whatever group size they have available. Two of those were deep cycle batteries I got a few years ago. One just died two weeks ago. It would only crank the engine for about four seconds, which usually isn't long enough for it to start. I put its twin in, and now it will run my inverter and laptop for over two hours, then still crank the engine just fine. Before all this drama, I had a puny group 24 in there that lasted over six years, then it developed a shorted cell. Whenever one of my numerous vehicles needs a battery, I grab whatever is at hand, and I have never ever looked at the CCA rating or gave it any concern. If it fits, it works.

My 2014 Ram came with a 750 CCA battery. It was a salvage vehicle that my buddy rebuilt at his body shop. Since I did not really need it, I let it sit at his shop over winter, and the battery ran dead, as expected, and froze. The people at the battery store said the replacement would run $135.00 because it was a special size for hood clearance, with recessed posts. Upon their suggestion, they looked in their reconditioned pile, and found one rated at only 675 CCA. Naturally I grabbed that one, and it has been working fine. I only drive that truck about once a month. It always fires right up, and that battery will also run my laptop for well over two hours.

I pay for these batteries by turning in five or six old ones for the "core". They would not take my old Ram battery until I could prove it was really bad. They said I needed to take it home, slow-charge it for three days, then test it. Sure enough, it is working fine in another vehicle, just like they said it probably would. This might be one of the new "absorbed glass mat", (AGM) batteries I have heard about that have unusual requirements. Going to have to learn more about them.

The bottom line is you are obsessing over the wrong thing. Do not waste your valuable time worrying over a few cold cranking amps. That is as relevant to the problem as is the number of street lights there is in Walmart's parking lot to whether or not you can see at night.

You're at the right place. In other online forums, anyone can jump in, then too many responses seriously confuse the issue. Here, you're in a private conversation with just me, and any other experts who want to add a comment. We try to stick with you until the problem is solved.

Are you willing to buy a digital volt / ohm / amp meter and some small jumper wires? Harbor Freight Tools has a perfectly acceptable meter for around seven bucks. They often go on sale for even less. When shopping for a meter, don't waste your money on features you won't use. Some expensive ones can measure frequency. Most of us never do that. I personally do not like auto-ranging meters for a number of reasons. They do their job just fine, and it could even be a slight benefit for this test, buy I have around 15 meters, and every one needs to have the range switched to manually.

If you want to pursue this, I'll describe what to do in a lot more detail. The biggest clinker here, starting with mid '90s models, is there is a computer that needs up to 20 minutes to go to "sleep" mode. During that 20 minutes, it can draw up to three amps. Most digital meters have an internal 2-amp fuse that will blow, so it can't be put in the circuit until that computer goes to sleep. The frustrating part is it will wake up again for another 20 minutes every time you break the circuit. That could be from momentarily disconnecting a battery cable, or, simply from switching ranges on the meter. To avoid all this frustration, all you need to do once the negative battery cable is removed, is to reconnect it with a small jumper cable. Harbor Freight Tools has those too for about five bucks for a dozen. The pack usually includes two each of six different colors.

I'll draw a diagram too of how to make the connections. Most meters come with a pair of probes, and rather than holding them in place with two hands while you do your work with your other two hands, use two of those jumper wires to connect the meter's probes. That way you don't have to hang onto them while you wait for the computer to time out.

Once everything is hooked up and the computer has gone to sleep, you'll need to remove one fuse, then look at the meter to see if current dropped significantly. It's customary to start at the fuse box inside the vehicle, so you'll need to do something to prevent the interior lights from turning on. That could involve removing the driver's door switch and unplugging it. A lot of them now are built into the door latch assembly. For those, just use a screwdriver shank to trip the latch closed.

Now that I've shared all that wondrous information, we should back up and consider a totally different possibility. It would be smart to have the charging system professionally load-tested first. This can not be done at an auto parts store with their hand-held testers. Those do a fine job of telling you if the alternator is putting out something or nothing, but that's all. We need to know exactly how much current it can produce. There are three possibilities for what will be found with the full-load output current test. There were three different alternators available for this model. The most common was the 90-amp alternator, so I'll use that for the rest of this sad story.

During the full-load test, the alternator is going to develop very close to 90 amps, 0 amps, or around 30 amps. 90 amps means it is working properly. 0 amps means it is dead, most commonly due to worn brushes, which are fairly easy and cheap to replace. 30 amps is what we're looking for. That is the culprit that is responsible for a lot of problems with an elusive solution. All alternators have six "diodes". Those are one-way valves for electrical current flow. It is not that uncommon for one of them to fail. When that happens, that alternator will only be able to develop exactly one third of its rated maximum current. That's what we're on the lookout for. In this story, 30 amps is not enough to run the entire electrical system under all conditions. The battery has to make up the difference until it slowly runs down over days or weeks.

The electric fuel pump can draw close to ten amps. Same for a pair of head lamp bulbs on "low", and same for a heater blower motor on a mid speed. Now add the injectors, ignition system, radio, and tail lights, and you're way beyond what the alternator can deliver. The typical symptom would be the engine cranks okay and starts most of the time, but if you start and stop a bunch of times during the day, eventually the engine will start cranking slower and slower. Once it's running, it usually won't stall alongside the road and let you sit, but it might let you sit in a parking lot or your driveway. Even if you do make it home, with the normal current drain overnight, the engine might not start the next morning. What's happening is the battery runs down from cranking the engine, then, once the engine is running, the alternator struggles to run the electrical system, but it doesn't have anything left over to recharge the battery.

It's important too to point out there is no such thing as a weak alternator, except for that diode problem. If you were to find, for example, your alternator can only develop 45 amps during the full-load test, that is not because it is weak. That indicates you either have a good 45-amp alternator, or you have a 136-amp alternator with one bad diode. No car uses an alternator as small as a 45-amp unit since the '70s, so we can rule that out. You can assume you have a larger alternator with a bad diode. The additional clue is the load tester will indicate a very high "ripple" voltage. That takes some time to explain, but you would mainly observe that as unusually loud whine on AM radio. A few load testers provide a printout of these important numbers, and ripple voltage will be listed as a voltage. Most do not, so we have to write them down on the repair order. For those, ripple voltage is only shown on a relative bar chart. It will be either "low" or "high" with no specific voltage. That is fine. We just want to know if it is high. When you have this test performed, be sure to specify you want to know the charging voltage, the full-load output current, and the ripple voltage. To find all of this out, the test only takes less than half a minute. It takes far longer to wheel the tester over to the vehicle and connect the few cables.

Very good. You still might want to check for broken wires between the door hings. That job is made a lot easier on most Jeep models because that harness unbolts, then unplugs, and can be inspected and repaired on the workbench, not with your head stuck in the door like on most vehicles.

I'm not an expert on four-wheel-drive systems. For that, you should post a new question so the other experts will see it and have a chance to reply. Also, the site categorizes them to help other people who are researching the same problem.

Dangling wires are the exact opposite of a short. In electrical terms, we call that an "open circuit". That would be the equivalent to a garden hose with the nozzle turned off. No current, (and no water), will flow. The opposite of that is a "closed circuit". That is a properly-working circuit that is turned on. All motors and light bulbs have some resistance that limits how much current will flow. In the garden hose, you could add resistance by squeezing the hose or standing on it. That higher resistance would decrease current flow.

When you have a short circuit, current is able to bypass that bulb or motor, so there is no resistance to limit current. That's when the fuse is overwhelmed and blows. The equivalent with the garden hose would be if you chopped it open with an axe. In this silly story there is still some resistance in the pipes, otherwise the municipal water tower would empty out instantly.

For the instrument cluster, my only experience with Jeeps is they're the ones I look for in salvage yards when I need the twist-in sockets for my displays. Typically all you need to remove the cluster is a Philips screwdriver. The entire dash doesn't have to be removed. I never pay attention the year of the model I'm working on, but they're all pretty much the same.

You didn't follow my sad story. There can't be any current flowing in something that is disconnected. For current to flow, you must have a "complete circuit". Here's the story I used in the classroom:

Water flows down multiple creeks into a river. From there it flows to the ocean, it evaporates, then the cloud floats back up here. Low-flying clouds get ripped on a church steeple and dump the water as rain. That water finds its way back to the creeks. That is a complete circuit. If you interrupt that anywhere, such as placing a sheet of plastic over the ocean, you stop the cycle, and no more water flows anywhere.

You also have to have a complete circuit in an electrical circuit. There's two competing schools of thought, but for us, we think of an electron as starting out by leaving the battery's positive post. From there it flows through wires, fuses, switches, and more wires, then through the "load", which is typically a motor or bulb. From there it flows through more wireds, often more switches, then typically to the body sheet metal or frame, then into the battery's negative post. If you interrupt that path anywhere, current stops flowing. That can be intentional, meaning a switch that's turned off, or a plug that's disconnected, or unintentional, such as a cut wire or corroded connector terminal. Any break anywhere means the circuit is not complete, then no current flows anywhere. That is what you have with the dangling wire.

The door switch listed for your vehicle is this teardrop design. You can find tons of them in any salvage yard. They were used on '96 and newer Caravans too. They have an extremely low failure rate, but a lot of people replaced them for the "Door Ajar" light and the interior lights turning on when going around a corner. That was caused by the slight outward movement of the door.

These switches are one-time auto-adjusting, and often slamming the door caused them to over-adjust, then this problem would occur. The simple fix is to use a pick to pull out the plastic "nail". That is how it adjusts. You pull it out too far, then it will find its adjustment when you close the door.

I had a lot of these vehicles come into the dealership with this problem, but instead of selling the customer new switches, or simply pulling the nails out, my fix was to pull the nail all the way out, slide on three M5 lock washers, then put the nail back in. My nifty red arrow is pointing to where the washers go. The washers prevented the nail from over-adjusting in the future, so the customer never had that problem again. I always did both switches right away, and for that professional touch, the people in the parts department gave me a bottle of black touch-up paint to color the washers so they didn't stick out.

If one of those switches is missing, my suspicion is someone less-informed than you removed it to stop the chime and warning message.

Every visor light I've ever seen turns on with a switch in the flap, so if that is closed, the light will be off.

I never replaced a latch assembly in a Jeep, but it is common now to find the lock actuator built into the assembly rather than being a separate solenoid. The first clue to look for is if the power lock operates with any switch, meaning a key fob, a switch on the door panel, or the speed-sensitive auto-locking feature through the Body Computer, the actuator is okay. If the lock motor is bad, or a wire going to it is broken, the power lock will not work from any switch.

If you hear a loud buzzing noise inside the door when you operate the lock, the assembly must be replaced. That is caused by the lock motor's armature has broken free and is spinning on the shaft instead of moving the gear train. That problem first showed up on the miserable redesigned '96 Caravans' sliding door locks. Those were not built into the latch assembly. I replaced a lot of those at the dealership.

If none work, you have to look for what they have in common. That would be the Body Computer and the lock switches. When only one or two don't work, the first suspect would be the wires between the door hinges. Next would be the individual actuators. If an actuator makes that buzzing noise, the wiring has to be okay. That points to the armature broken free and spinning without moving the lock linkage.

No. The armature is what is broken in the motor. That can only be repaired by replacing the latch assembly.