imported post
imported post
As an electronics guy, I can testify that intermittent electrical problems can be extremely frustrating; especially in a vehicle that can leave you stranded in god knows where. You have my sympathy.
My advice would have been to spend some time quality time near home with the vehicle and determine the mechanical circumstance(s) that may initiate the problem as well as all the electrical systems involved or not involved in the failure.
Using the circumstances and symptoms during failure, you (or your mechanic) can make intelligent guesses via the electrical schematic for the vehicle. In your case, complete failure is likely a ignition switch contact but could be something simple as previously suggested.
I took my car to honda for a similar problem to yours, only to have the mechanic type out my symptoms on a computer print out, hands the keys back to me an hour later, and charged me $80... quoted me straight time between $150 to $2000 to fix it.
Once I paid closer attention to the symptoms and related it to the schematic I was able to pin down that it was likely a secondary ground used only in the vehicles control unit as most of my computer related devices had strange behavior or failures. Close inspection along the harnesses and under the car battery near the computer wiring harness connection revealed a small mouse chew. The exact wire I thought it would be so I fired up my soldering iron and fixed it for free.
The morals of the story are that one needs to think of the intermittent symptoms as an opportunity (figure a way somehow that you can take advantage of them via test tools and reasoning). Secondly, that mice are not cute!
BTW...What did the mechanic find / fix?
