2001 SL2 1.9L

If I drive my car the RPM & Speedo will freeze and the autotrans will hang in second gear and when I stop it dies. and the Battery is dead with a new Battery it is the same thing. I was thinking that maybe the Computer is bad. any Ideas.


sng1952

 

Posituve battery cable rotting from the inside out? Maybe have the charging system LOAD tested.

 

What exactly are you trying to define by saying the battery is dead? Are you saying there is no electricity anywhere in the car? The dome lights do not work, the radio does not work? And in addition the car will not even try to start? If that is the definition you are using then sw2cam's suggestion is as good as it gets! Except there are two cables, one positive and one negative and each of those cables have connections elsewhere other than the at the battery. All of which could be loose as does the ground or negative connection from the body of the car to some location on the engine.
I recently purchased a battery that was not dead per say. It was dysfunctional in that when the voltage was measured rather than a 12.4 volt reading it was some where around 8volts or something. The point? The replacement was a tad over $100.00. A number that says before I would spend it I doggon well should have determined what shape the battery was in. A functional test I can perform easily with a $2.00 meter purchased from Harbor Freight or could have been performed by a counter person at the local auto parts store. Well a lot of them anyway. I have been an advocate of CarQuest for years but lately I have shopped a lot at the local O'Reilly's with a great amount of success. Had this been done it very well could have saved an uneeded expense.

 

I have to concur with the previous posters - need more information with respect to the battery and the charging system. Saturns are especially "quirky" when the power is not up to the correct levels ...

 

When the car dies all electrical is working lights radio,wipers,dash lights but not enough to start the car. Triple A tested the battery and found it to be good. after boosting the the car they tested the chargeing system and found it to be OK as well. Tried to drive the car home got 1/4 mile and all gauges frozen and car died again whith the same problem Electrical items working lights, radio, wipers, dash lights but not enough power to start had it towed home.

 

Go get the entire charging system load tested.
What's the voltage drop across the battery at idle?

 

Well, that was an improvement anyway. It looks from all the data you have supplied that you have some form of an intermittent electrical problem and with out a doubt they are the hardest to find.
Looking at the facts: You have already put a new battery in AND when tested the battery and the charging system seem to be o.k. an indication that you probably did not need the battery in the first place. And when the failure takes place it happens out of the blue and the symptom is as follows: The tachometer and the speedometer freeze or stop working and the transmission hangs up in 2nd gear. All of these items are electronically controlled by your computer in this model car and in addition everything else seems to be working. It is obvious that the battery is not dead but something else is going on that is electrical. But what ever it is if the battery was dead,they would not work either.
That would seem to point the finger at the computer that controls things. That does not eliminate the possibility that is is some form of a wiring problem. But wiring problems that act as if the battery is dead also has a tendency to cause everything else you describe as working to also act as if they are not working.
My suggestion at the moment is to get an accurate read out of error codes the computer thinks is going on and to continue for the time being to look for problems related to the big heavy duty wires that come off the battery. However the odds I do not think are very good to be much in the way of successful unless you have some one there when the problem actually takes place that has some clue how to do any electrical problem solving.

 

How many miles are on the car and do you carry a lot of keys on your key ring? Too many keys on the key ring can cause uneven wear on the ignition key cylinder and tumblers. Perhaps the problem lies there.