Hi guys, need some help here. We are at our wits end with this Crossfire. The car is a 2004 Limited 6-speed. Here is what happens:

After not driving the car for a while, I put the key in, and nothing happens. The car does have power to all lights and accessories, and the heater and radio work. On the dash only the airbag and TPMS lights come on, but they go off like normal. Turning the key seems to have no affect on the car other than powering on the accessories, when we turn it to crank position, nothing happens at all. Eventually, enough time will go by and the instrument panel lights all come on like magic and the car starts and runs great. Other than this weird electrical bug, the car is in perfect shape with just 65k miles. If we check the voltage it is always above 12v when this is happening. Sometimes, this even happens after we start driving. Car loses all electrical power to the gauge cluster and the engine dies, but lights, radio, heat, etc all remain on.

Here is what we have done:

• Replaced relay module
• Replaced siren module (it was dead)
• New Battery
• Car lives on a Battery Tender when not used for a few days.
• And we took the car to our mechanic (he is no joke, he even successfully replaced TPMS sensors in this car, and does lots of work for us on all of our cars). He had the car for a week and couldn’t replicate the problem and couldn’t find any issues with the electrical system.

The car never has any pending or active codes either.

Has anyone had this before? Thanks!

 

You may have a problem with either the Crankshaft Position Sensor, or the Camshaft Position Sensor. I would also check the main ground wires: a)negative battery cable to fender, b) just forward of battery there is a post with four brown wires, c)under the car on the drivers side bare wire from chassis to engine, and I would be certain all the connections are clean in the main feed fuse box just forward of the battery in the small box about the size of a cigarette pack. Being in NJ I would put a little carbon black on all those connections to insure good connections considering salty roads. Some people have had problems with the connectors making good contact on top the RCM Really Control Module which you have replaced. Good Luck.

 

What Zip was referring to in post 2, was what happened to ONE of my RCM connectors. The 'sleeves' on three of the connectors broke loose from the top of the connector where the wire is soldered. I made a post about it with pictures so if you want to read about it look it up here ( https://www.crossfireforum.org/forum...sue-alone.html ). Remove the NEG battery cable, wait for 2-3 minutes, and take the RCM out. Set that aside and take a few close-up pictures of the wires in each connector so that when you inspect them out of the connector, you can put them back in the right place. DO ONE CONNECTOR AT A TIME STARTING WITH THE ONE THAT I FOUND 3 OUT OF THE 5 BROKEN. In the place where the wires are the same colors, I marked dashes on the wire in relation to the pin number it went to(ie if it was in pin marked 1, I put one dash on the wire. Pin 2 got two dashes, remember it in only for the connectors with two or more of the same color wire size since you'll be using the picture to locate the colors into the right connector holes). The large 5 wire/cable connector (with two thicker orange wires in a row), gently unclip the clips and slip the 5 connectors (don't mix them up). You'll see the 'sleeve' that slides onto the pin of the RCM, in my case three of those sleeves were defective and eventually cracked and separated. This meant those 3 pins were like they were never connected. Make sure you do not mix these wires up, if you don't find one there go to the others and see if any of them were broken (the three I found were repaired with soldering on three new connectors. The link for the part (for those LARGE wired connectors) is in the post with pictures. Doing this might be the simplest check (IF YOU DON"T MIX THE WIRES IN THE CONNECTORS). I took close-up digital pictures of the wires as I opened up the clips on the connector so they could be reinserted into the correct places). If you make sure your putting the right pin connector in the right hole on the connector, you'll have them right. MB part number for the LARGE pin bushings in the connectors of the RCM, is ( 003 545 26 26 ). Remember, those are the LARGE pin bushing connectors, I never could locate the smaller ones (which I never needed). Good luck!


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A defective/intermittent ignition switch, or related connectors and wiring from the switch could cause all of those symptoms. The ignition switch wiring is shown on page 8w-10-9 of the 04 service manual. Pay attention to the pin 1 and 4 coming out of the switch. Pin 4 feeds the pulse module which is required to engage the starter. Pin 1 goes to page 8w-10-12. There you will see it powers the ignition coils (engine dies) body control module and other items. There is also a path going to the instrument cluster.