I am driving my 1997 Cadillac Seville home tonight, and about 1 mile into it, my engine temp dial goes flat to cold, my gear indictation lights start lighting up in a cascading light display over and over, my information display randomly shows multiple messages like, no battery charge, high battery voltage, airbag service, airbag light stays on, battery light come on, traction control light comes and stays on steady on but info display never said it was engaged and I listened but did not hear it engaging either.Turn signals are unresponsive,speedometer dial is not digital but not registering properly to know my actual driving speed, but car continues to run.Servive engine lights or service engine soon message never come on though during any of this. Pulled car over and turned hazard light on and they did work. As I kept it running in parked gear, the cops saw me pulled over and offered to follow me home for safety. Turned car off in driveway and started it up again immediately and every was fine. I’m afraid to drive it now! What is going on?
Restart it the next time too. All those lights at once means nothing except that the battery or alternator power may have been interrupted. You might have dirty or corroded terminals at the battery, or the computer may be going out. There may be other possibilities but there’s two.
I would start by checking to see if the alternator is putting out any AC voltage. There should be no more than .1 volt of AC voltage across the battery when the engine is running at around 2,000 RPM. Also check for high DC voltage. It should not be higher than 15 volts.
The trouble may also be with a bad switch section in the ignition switch.
You know, over the summer my car would drive fine at one start, then it would not turn over or start(like the battery was dead) Someone told me to jiggle the battery cables a little. I did and it would start fine. This happened a few times with the same result to the same intervention. My husband tightened up the cable leads to the battery and we’d hoped that was the end of it. Do you think that could have been related to this most recent problem? If the wires have any shorts, would that be the possible reason for my light display last night? By the way thank you for your time to respond.
I would suspect that the alternator is failing. This type of random functioning of various lights and instruments can be an indicator of an alternator that is in its last death throes.
It’s not shorts you are experiencing, it’s opens. You need to remove the battery cables from the battery and clean the battery terminals and the battery cable ends. They may have to be replaced.