Everyone,

I'll apologize in advance for likely inaccurately describing this, but... I'm not a mechanic, and I have not yet received final paperwork detailing this.

Was having odd hiccups with the car - getting error messages, including "excessive battery discharge", sometimes problems shifting the automatic, failures ("Malfunction R, N, D, may not be possible!", etc. A rare difficulty in starting. Most troublesome was an occasional burning smell.

Well, took the car car into the dealership, and they tell me that I have a bad battery and cables. I thought that the cables were just simple cables, but it was explained to me that these are more complex - these are the cables that collectively connect the battery, the system that controls the airbags, and the rest of the car. Finding a replacement battery wasn't a problem, but replacement cables had to be found.

It was described to me that they think that these cables were installed incorrectly. In the course of driving, the cables were apparently flexing, occasionally shorting out (the burning smell!), ruining the battery, and causing other erratic problems.

Hopefully, I'll have the car back tomorrow, along with specific details. But thought folks might find this interesting in the meantime.

Any questions...

 

Thanks for the heads up! As we have the same car and year, I'm going to check the routing of our battery cables