Any of you old enough to remember the line, "And now for something completely different"? Well, that's what I was ready for after firing up my 04 XF from her winter hibernation, pulling onto the street and the car going into limp mode. What was completely different was instead of again pulling out the OBD scanner and getting the code of the day, I took her to an audio shop. What better place to take a temperamental beast than a place that is playing with delicate circuits all day long? Like many of you here say, stop just buying and plugging in parts and start testing. They claimed to be able to test circuits and got right on it. Before this, last fall before parking her I did replace a bad brake sensor, made sure the RCM was repaired, cleaned out all the drains (the front passenger side and the back spoiler were stopped up) pulled out the trunk floor to dry out the bottom that was damp and opened up that drain and put her on a trickier charge. So out of frustration I called around and asked garages if they knew how to use a voltmeter with none of saying yes till the audio shop . So far they've found that though the batter was only a year old, it was not fully charging, not draining, but not charging all the way. Could it be that simple? They say so, but are keeping her on my insistence running her each day, then re-testing each time, and putting on 50 miles to see if anything lights up. So far so good. Today should tell. Maybe we'll drive her from Pittsburgh to Dallas after all.

 

Shades of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Good one !

 

I do not know how many voltmeters I have. Enough for one in each car. Do have two BT-360s and every car has a voltmeter. Plus a bench with voltage supplies, an audio generator, and a tablet based oscilloscope. And then there is what is in the garage. African or European swallow ?