2001 Hyundai Elantra problem

[xeffects]

Hey guys, I know most of you aren't into cars or anything like that but here is a funny one. Today I got up at 3 AM and drove to Walmart, yes they are open 24 hours.

On my way home, the check engine light magically came on......about 2 miles from my house I noticed something strange with the dash lights as they slowly gradually began to dim out, you would be to be looking at it to see it but they were super slowly dimming out, once I got home I turned the vehicle off and attempted to re-start, battery was completely dead.

Now the car wont start, the batter doesn't have enough juice to crank the engine over. My conclusion to all this is.....the check engine light came on to indicate a problem with the charging system.....the car didn't seem to have enough horse power also, as if the spark was not strong enough to light the fuel air mixture.....this indicates a charging system problem which of course, leads to the alternator itself.

I believe that on my way home, my alternator died and the vehicled continued to run on battery power, this will trigger the check engine light and the computer will immediately switch to limp mode...this leans the mixture to a certain extent that makes it almost impossible to start the car depending on the temperature inside the cylinder bores.

Thankfully I can still take the bus to work, no problem but I still have to deal with that dread street cleaning truck, the last thing I need is a ticket from street cleaning, i'll just have to move the car over when I see it and wait till next week when I get money to obviously, get a new batter and new alternator but I wont be stupid, i'll scan first and make the final decisions on that.

Take care guys.

 

[redrooster]

could be electronics, could be alternator, could be the actuator/controler of the alternator, or just the coals in the alternator are set (in case it´s the type of alternator which still uses some), sometimes it helps to use a hammer to hit the alternator (softly) so that the coals will become loose again.

I hope the translation is rather understandable as my english knowledge of car parts is not very good, although I know a lot...

 

[xeffects]

I found the problem this morning. Got a scanner and hooked it up to my car, got code P0715 which is a transmission code for the turbine sensor.....indicated a circuit mafunction.

I located the sensor and had a look, turns out the connector was loose, it got loose because my car has a bad wheel bearing on the left driver side wheel which causes tremendous vibration when driving, i'm working to fix that problem also.

I checked the alternator and battery and they were fine, got the readings I was looking for. What I did find however was the transmission engaged in 3rd gear even thought it was in Parking, the sensor malfunction sent the wrong signals and the tranny staid in 3rd gear, explains why it felt as if the car didn't have any horse power, it was because it was in third gear, unbelievable.

The minute I turned the car off, the starter was attemping to crank the engine while the tranny was still in third gear, yes this is an automatic transmision and the newtral safety switch is ok but since the netral safety switch was reading the lever at parking it allowed this cranking.....the mafunction was caused by the sensor.

The fix? I unhooked the battery and plugged the sensor back in, son of a b*tch started right up like nothing happened and the check engine light dissapeared. I'm not too concerned as the smog test for my vehicle insn't due till another 9 months, plenty of time to have corrected any possible issues but now its fine.

Its scary to know that todays car don't run mechanically anymore, its all computer controlled, take the computer and the engine is nothing but garbage.