I have a 1997 Ford E-150 conversion van, triton V8. I drove the van during the day everything was normal. That night I went out and the van would not start. It had very low battery power. Tried to jump it and still wouldn’t start. next day tried to use a charger still nothing.
I took the battery to the local parts store and they did a check and said the battery was fully charged ( the little test bubble was also green on the battery). They suggested the starter after describing the problem. I put in a new starter and it still wouldn’t start. I put in a new battery and the van fired right up. Problem fixed so I thought.
I noticed the next day that while driving all my gages weren’t working properly. My next thought was alternator or belt. I took it in to a local shop. They said the alternator tested good but the belt was really worn. I had them put on a new belt thinking the old one might be slipping and causing the gage problems. Now I have a new Battery, Starter, and Belt, everything checks out as charging but the gages still start going goofy after a few mins. of driving.
My fear is there is still something wrong and since I use this van for my company I cannot afford to be stranded.
Any ideas on why my gas, temp, oil, and alt. gage would start jumping around and not reading properly??
Everybody seems to be stumped and any help would be greatly appreciated.
Ignition switch ? cables or wires rubbed through touching ground ?
I suggest throwing no more parts at the car until the problem has been diagnosed. Instead of telling the shop what to check or what to replace, tell them the symptoms and let them do the diagnosis. It could be anything from a blown fusable link to a dead fuel pump. Without a good description of the symptoms, what it does and/or does not do when you try to start it, it’s impossible to even guess.
Diagnosis will probably start with a reading for any stored computer codes. From there it may proceed to whether spark or fuel is missing. That will point the tech in the proper direction to further analyze.
kudos!
Clean your battery cable connections; both ends and any ground wires that you might find connected to your engine block to eliminate these as a possible source of your problems. This vehicle is old enough now for this to be a possibility especially if you live in salted winter road country.