03 venture major electrical problems

[saldrukar]

hey all, got a big problem w my venture , will start at the beginning, around 60,000 miles the battery light started coming on, so naturally i thought it wasn't charging, so i took the van to my place of work and put my battery/alt tester on the van and it was charging fine ( 14.0 volts ) ok so then i removed the battery and loaded tested it , it loaded tested bad, so i replaced it, started van and no light , wife drove it for 1 day and the light came back on, so i tested the the charging system again , still at 14.0 volts with either the light on or off, by the way the light is on all the time now, while driving at nite the seatbelt light comes on along with the abs light and the battery light goes out, when this happens the headlights get brighter for about 15 sec, the the battery light come back on and the lite dim back to normal, now as if thats not enough i now have the abs lite comes on with the airbag lite and the transmission goes into limp mode and the a/c quits and the power windows and locks will not work until you shut the vehicle off and turn the key to the on position, thank you for any help !,forgot to add that when the abs and airbag lite come on everything in the dash flickers and it will keep doing it until u shut the key off and restart, it might take a couple of times of starting and shutting off to be able to get it back to where u can at least drive the vehicle

[ypelchat]

I would have the alternator checked. Looks like it's about to fail. If that's not the case, you should check for a burned wiring harness somewhere in the hood compartment. My 02 cents.

Yves.

[cdru]

It would be interesting to see what the power output looks like from your alternator. Your alternator produces an AC voltage that gets rectified to DC for use in the vehicle and charging the battery. That rectifier can go bad causing strange things to happen.

[saldrukar]

thanks for the input , took van to chevy dealer to be looked at, will find out later today

[RNRea]

Update?

[saldrukar]

srry didnt get back sooner, they said the alt was giving bogus current to the dash when the diode took a dump, so replaced that and that cured the battery light problem but i still have the airbag and abs light come on every once in a while but doesnt seem to interfer w driving the van so will let it go for now until i get some time to check some wiring in the dash, that seems to be the logical answer right now

[cdru]

For the airbag light, check all the airbag connections, especially the one under the driver's seat. I beleive they are usually bright yellow and have a "pin" that locks them together. There have been more then a few people report that a poor connection under the drivers seat tripped the light and just jiggling the cable fixed the problem.

[RNRea]

With all the EMC from a bad alternator you might have damaged the airbag and/or abs modules, but only partially. So as long as they don't fail just before the big accident you would probably be ok...