Hello. I’m hoping someone can give me some advice. I have a 2012 Juke SL. I have close to 126,000 miles. The battery and brake light have been flashing on together sporadically. I took it in and they said it was the alternator. With all the mileage I figured it was time to get a new one anyway. No big deal. About 4 days later the icons flash up on the dashboard again. I take it to another shop (because I’m in a different city) and they say it is the water pump and the pulley. So I get that fixed because it was also making a loud sound. The lights start flashing again. I took it to O’ReIly’s to test the alternator and battery. alternator was good. Electrical was good. The battery test showed it wasn’t charging fully and when we looked at it the clamp on the right side of battery was loose. They tightened it for me and the lights hadn’t flashed on for a few days but now when I step on the brakes the interior lights on the stereo and dashboard along with the battery and brake light flash up quickly. I know the car is old but I have put in so much money on the repairs the last few weeks. Does anyone have any suggestions on what it could be? Has anybody else experienced this with their Nissan? Thanks in advance.
I read somewhere that the brake pads might need to be changed but I haven’t heard them making a sound.
Again, thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.
Is the battery firmly bolted down?
Is there an auto electric shop near you? They typically work on electrical components brought in to them by owners and dealers, but they may have or recommend someone who’s good at diagnosing electrical problems in cars. That’s needed before more work is done here.
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Sounds like you have a short in tour brake light wiring but modern cars with things like body control modules or power modules can have very strange electrical symptoms.
Agree with needing a good auto electric shop.
As with cars - it could be anything. That said, we also have a 2012 Juke SL and had similar light problems. The issue I had is that Nissan has a device in the car to limit how much charging the alternator does (to lessen the power draw off the engine and so increase gas mileage). But what happens is this device acts crazy sometimes and outputs too little volts and if it is outputting too few volts and the battery can’t make up for it, then not only may you have problems starting, but the light controllers act crazy - ours were the hazard lights and various headlights/tail lights flashing or wouldn’t even go off. First thing - charge the battery fully (again), then get one of those cigarette lighter Volt meters (you can get them cheap on eBay or Amazon), plug it into your cig. lighter and watch the volts. If you have sporadically low volts then you can disable this alternator limiting device at the battery (check the manual but I believe it is connected as part of the positive (?) battery connector - a little wire you just disconnect). This should give you stable volts. If this is your problem, then it cost you $10 to fix, if not, it only cost you $10. Also, there is a recall on some Jukes for this problem where they re-porgram the computer to make sure the volts stay high enough, but my Juke wasn’t covered (your local library may have free, full access to recalls and TSB’s). I still don’t know why the lights go crazy with low volts, but mine sure did (I am used to old cars where the lights would just stop working, but now with everything computer controlled, who knows…). Also, this volt limiter problem is sporadic - that is why I could test my alt. and get a good reading and then a hour later get a very low reading. I replaced three batteries in my Juke before I stumbled onto this issue. Good luck!
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