My car is a 1995 Geo Metro, which I bought reluctantly, but which I now love. It ran like a charm up until a few years ago, when it began to develop age-related problems.
The latest problem was a nagging worry for about the last six to eight months. The airbag light would flash on, for no particular reason, after I'd been driving the car for a little while. It would flash for about seven times as if it were signalling me in Morse code, and then it would stop. This is the same pattern that it flashes when you first turn the key in the ignition and all the other dashboard lights turn on as well.
The first time it happened I was in the middle of an hour-and-a-half drive, and it scared me - I was worried to continue driving. But quickly I grew used to it. I asked my mechanic about it, but he told me there was no way to diagnose the problem since it did not occur with regularity - no way to experiment on it while in the garage.
Eventually it went from flashing once every now and then to several times on every ten-minute trip. Finally I began to notice a couple of other lights flashing on briefly as well: the ABS light, and the battery warning light. With the battery warning light I took the car into the shop again. They checked the battery and said it was fine. The day after that, the battery light came on and did not go off from then on. Oddly no other lights came on: no more airbag light flashing or anything. But the daytime running lights didn't come on either.
The good thing was that, with the battery warning light on constantly, there was something for the mechanic to actually work with.
And well, it appears that they fixed the problem, knock on wood. They have replaced the alternator, which they say was faulty. They now tell me that the alternator can cause problems like the airbag light flashing (but if that's true, then why didn't they just check the alternator six months ago??). Since the new alternator has been in place for the past several days, there have been no more flashing lights, the battery warning light is off, and the daytime running lights are happily shining as usual. Hopefully that is the end of that!
Cost: $275 for a new alternator, and $225 for labor (@ $83/h).
2 comments:
I have similar problem about the flashing light in the dash board on 97 geo Metro LSI. I haven't solved it yet but I noticed very poor termination between the negative side of the battery to chassis. in fact ground connection between high voltage transformer to the engine body near distributor seems to be burned due to heavy current passing through it. I will re do the termination and see if the situation improves.
I wish you good luck in solving the problem! After the mechanics replaced the alternator, I didn't run into the problem again in the approximately 1.5 remaining years that I had the car. The problem that you mention with the battery makes me wonder whether I had something similar (my battery seemed to burn out unusually frequently), but I never heard a mechanic mention any problems with the connection or terminals.
I'm still a big fan of the Metro. They should bring it back, like they did with the Beetle - with some additional safety features I'd snap one up again.
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