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Re: Update Re: Bad shifts and battery light Posted by pme [Email] (#1496) [Profile/Gallery] (more from pme) on Fri, 20 May 2016 04:21:24 In Reply to: Update Re: Bad shifts and battery light, ghylar, Thu, 19 May 2016 17:53:50 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
Sounds to me like your alternator is failing, and not keeping up with the car's power needs. I would also suspect the battery cable and battery, The light comes on when the car is drawing more power than the charging system is putting out, depleting the battery.
When my original alternator gave out years ago, I got the flashing light, and the transmission went into limp home mode, giving me the very clunky shifts as you described. These cars do very strange things when the available electric power gets too low.
Re-reading your original posts, it seems that you were seeing this more when the car is cold. That makes some sense to me -- when my battery cable got really bad (and we then figured out it was the culprit), I was getting the flashing light shortly after start-up and turning on something electric (open window, etc), especially on short trips (like Sat am errands). Turned out that the cable was not allowing the current from the alternator to efficiently recharge the battery after heavy power draw for the start-up, unless I drove for a long time - like my 45 minute ride to work. 5 - 10 minutes between the dry cleaners and the bank wasn't enough, and I would get the light.
Good luck.........
~pme
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