A plague has descended upon our house. Good men have tried and failed to cure it, and bad men have run screaming in horror. I’ve visited the dealership and three separate mechanics, spent so much time there I’ve gained three pounds from the donuts, and still this ailment persists. Please won’t one of you help me to kill this Grendel, this goddamn trunk light?
It’s a 2005 PT Cruiser, and I’ll be driving along and then BZZZZZ, the buzzer sounds and the overhead lights come on. Very dangerous when driving at night. On the dashboard, the trunk light illuminates, indicating the back hatch is open. It’s not. Sometimes it will come on and stay on, and sometimes it will flicker very rapidly, the buzzer having an epileptic fit and the lights panicking at the disco.
Here’s what I know: It’s electrical, and it’s affected by the cold. I know it’s electrical because the dealership replaced the struts or whatever they’re called that hold the hatchback up. Didn’t work. Then mechanic #1 said the latch just needed to be greased. Didn’t work. Mechanic #2 said it needed a new latch, so he replaced it. Didn’t work. Mechanic #3 said it was something in the computer, so he went in there and did God knows what. Didn’t work.
I’m now forced to go to a psychiatrist rather than another mechanic, but in the meantime I thought I would see if anyone has had a similar problem. I beg of you, please accept this challenge so I can begin the process of getting over my new fear of buzzers. It makes it hard to watch the Game Show Network.
First of all, what is the buzzer for? I have never heard of a buzzer associated with interior lights. From your description it sounds like none of the techs replaced the hatch light switch. That is the first thing I would look at. I see what they were getting at, perhaps the hatch was not held down tightly. But it seems that is not the case. Does the light fixture itself have a manual switch that can be set to open with the hatch or whenever you want the light, or is it just a dumb light fixture?
This thread on a PT Cruiser site has a couple of suggestions (last two posts). A relay in the jack compartment, or a break in the wires where they go from the lift gate into the body of the car.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The buzzer is to alert the driver the trunk is open. In my case, it is, in fact, not open, and therein lies the problem. All the lights in the interior of the car come on, not just the light near the hatch. Once it happened while I was driving at night, and it was quite scary to look in the rearview mirror and see nothing but a bright light.
I actually came across that earlier, amidst my hairpulling and frustration with the mechanics. I got as far as locating the jack compartment but then got scared that I would pull the wrong wire and accidentally detonate Nakatomi Plaza. If you have specifics on what I should be looking for, I’m all ears!
I don’t, I just did a quick search of the first PT forum I could find. But it sounded to me like the wiring leading from the top of the hatch into the body of the car might be a more likely cause, according to that last post. You’ll want to open up the hatch and examine the area up there and look for any noticeable wear on the wiring.
We fixed all the numerous issues with my wife’s PT Cruiser by trading the damned thing in on a Nissan. That car was in the shop more than any other two cars that we owned. Just one issue: the automatic transmission went out a 74K miles. When it started to make the same clunks at 97K miles, that’s when we dumped it.
Huh, we’ve actually had pretty good luck with it, other than this. We bought it used just for tooling around in, nothing major. So far, other than normal maintenance issues, this is the first thing that’s really cropped up.
It definitely has something to do with the cold. It happened like crazy yesterday, when the cold front moved in, but didn’t happen the day before. Is that a clue?? Otherwise we might have to live with it until spring, and I’m not sure my sanity has that much rope.
But, this is a situation where that’s probably your best option. The dealer has the diagnostic equipment to look at the status codes and perhaps a memory dump.
They also have a database with repair history for this model car. This problem (door ajar) has certainly been seen before and there should be documentation to troubleshoot and fix it.
Door ajar is same as trunk open in this case.
It’s a PITA. A trivial problem that didn’t need a solution until computers and sensors came a along.
The dealership was the first place I took it, as I mentioned in the OP. And Mechanic #3 I believe did reset the computer. At least, he identified the problem was coming from the computer and said “I’ll go in there and see what’s going on”. Not sure what he ended up doing, but the clock was reset to 12:00 so I assume he reset the computer.
It is almost certainly not a computer problem if it only manifests in the cold. There is a defect in your wiring, which could be about anywhere. I would guess that the dome light comes on because that is what happens when you open the hatch. So something is sending a signal that the hatch is open, probably due to an open circuit. It might be a damaged wire that shrinks in the cold, losing its connection, or it might be where the wire connects to the harness/main bus. Have someone investigate the wiring related to the hatch. Or see if they can just ground the sensor line out so that the sensor circuit is always closed.
Yes, yes, this all sounds right and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. I even told the dealership and mechanics that I’m 99% sure it’s electrical, because sometimes it will spasm as if I’m alternately holding two wires together and taking them apart, like a game of Operation.
So, if Frogstar World B is too far from northern New Jersey and I can’t pay you to come take a look at it, can you take a look at this and see if they’re talking about what you’re talking about? It seems like maybe the tan wire is what I’m looking for, no?
If it were me, I’d return to the dealer and explain what you’ve explained to us, including documentation if possible. You’ve run down some of the possibilities, so they should have a smaller range of options to explore.
And if you continue to have problems, ask that you get a refund for not fixing the problem they said they addressed.
Oh please, I went back and got a refund weeks ago, before I took it to mechanic #1. I gave them two chances; they swore it was the pressurized air things that hold the hatchback up, even though I told them it was electrical, so I lost a week without the car while they ordered that, then when that didn’t work I took it back and they said it had been damaged in shipping so they needed to order another one. There was another week lost. They replaced them again and it still didn’t fix the issue, so I went and got a refund before I took it to the first mechanic.
It could be the wiring (yes, it seems from your link that the tan wire is the one that you’re interested in), but it could also be the switch itself. Intermittent electrical issues can be a bear to track down. I am surprised that none of the mechanics checked the switch or wire continuity, though. Not that either would test bad except when the problem is occurring…