Pando Populus
New member
Hello everybody! New sprinter owner and new to this forum. Thank you in advanced for any knowledge dropped.
2004 Dodge Sprinter 3500
Drove 500 miles from Sacramento through Nevada, stopped at some back road hot springs in Wells, Nevada and parked at a truck stop to sleep for the night. Woke up in the middle of the night to a random beeping noise coming from somewhere behind the dash. Attempted to start the car and experienced no crank no start. Odometer HUD reads start error. After playing around with it for a while my battery began to drain and continues to do so even when the van is left in the off position. I should mention that about two weeks ago I was at a music festival miles away from any dealerships when my only key broke in half in the back door. Managed to pull the half out with tweezers and inserted it into the ignition in hopes that I could just leave the half in there, insert the other half still attached to the key fob on top of that and start her that way. It worked then and worked without any problems for nearly two weeks of driving it like that. Expensive tow avoided! However now I am curious if leaving half of the key in the ignition is what is draining my battery? I understand that the starter in these vehicles is powered by a wire connected to the ignition itself, as opposed to directly from the battery. Could leaving the half of the key without the key fob and rfid chip be the cause of the battery drain or should I be looking elsewhere for issues? The next day I tried jump starting it which resulted in an improvement of occasionally one crank while hooked up to another running battery, but still no start. I have been stranded here for 3 days now, luckily it died where I have free wifi access from my parking spot so I have spent hours researching a solution and haven't been able to come up with anything yet. Tried disconnecting the battery, fuse box, ECM, and the black box behind the odometer (I think its called a TCU or something?) and may have done something wrong because now my steering wheel is all locked up and I can't turn the key at all. Maybe because I did the wrong order of disconnecting the other components while the battery was still connected or reconnected the battery while other components were still unplugged? Not sure which scenario specifically caused the steering lockup because I tried many different scenarios. Also tried extracting the half key by sticking a magnetized flat head into the ignition, but it wasn't strong enough to pull it out. Called a mechanic in Salt Lake City who said that the steering column is probably locked because it's in anti theft mode from my disconnecting of certain components and it might reset after anywhere from 2 to 24 hours of the battery being connected. I managed to connect a battery charger from my house batteries to the vehicle batteries so it has a steady charge now, hopefully will fix the steering column issue but besides that I'm running out of ideas and had next to no knowledge of sprinters or hardly even cars so I'm sure there could be angles that I'm missing, any and all input is greatly appreciated
2004 Dodge Sprinter 3500
Drove 500 miles from Sacramento through Nevada, stopped at some back road hot springs in Wells, Nevada and parked at a truck stop to sleep for the night. Woke up in the middle of the night to a random beeping noise coming from somewhere behind the dash. Attempted to start the car and experienced no crank no start. Odometer HUD reads start error. After playing around with it for a while my battery began to drain and continues to do so even when the van is left in the off position. I should mention that about two weeks ago I was at a music festival miles away from any dealerships when my only key broke in half in the back door. Managed to pull the half out with tweezers and inserted it into the ignition in hopes that I could just leave the half in there, insert the other half still attached to the key fob on top of that and start her that way. It worked then and worked without any problems for nearly two weeks of driving it like that. Expensive tow avoided! However now I am curious if leaving half of the key in the ignition is what is draining my battery? I understand that the starter in these vehicles is powered by a wire connected to the ignition itself, as opposed to directly from the battery. Could leaving the half of the key without the key fob and rfid chip be the cause of the battery drain or should I be looking elsewhere for issues? The next day I tried jump starting it which resulted in an improvement of occasionally one crank while hooked up to another running battery, but still no start. I have been stranded here for 3 days now, luckily it died where I have free wifi access from my parking spot so I have spent hours researching a solution and haven't been able to come up with anything yet. Tried disconnecting the battery, fuse box, ECM, and the black box behind the odometer (I think its called a TCU or something?) and may have done something wrong because now my steering wheel is all locked up and I can't turn the key at all. Maybe because I did the wrong order of disconnecting the other components while the battery was still connected or reconnected the battery while other components were still unplugged? Not sure which scenario specifically caused the steering lockup because I tried many different scenarios. Also tried extracting the half key by sticking a magnetized flat head into the ignition, but it wasn't strong enough to pull it out. Called a mechanic in Salt Lake City who said that the steering column is probably locked because it's in anti theft mode from my disconnecting of certain components and it might reset after anywhere from 2 to 24 hours of the battery being connected. I managed to connect a battery charger from my house batteries to the vehicle batteries so it has a steady charge now, hopefully will fix the steering column issue but besides that I'm running out of ideas and had next to no knowledge of sprinters or hardly even cars so I'm sure there could be angles that I'm missing, any and all input is greatly appreciated