My 2009 Gem has been flawless but I guess when I unloaded it off the trailer this past weekend 2 wires pulled loose from somewhere. I didn’t notice then until Sunday. The car runs perfect, all lights works, everything functions correctly except now when I have it plugged into the charger it won’t actually charge. The plug light comes on like it’s charging but it been plugged in for 2 days and the battery indicator is not full.
The wire that I found pulled loose were on the passenger side outside of the loom the rest of the harness runs in. One is orange/blue and the other is orange/black. I do have 2 red wires that were under the car loose on tbe same side and they both run to the same negative battery post on the driver side battery. I can not tell if they were connected or not
The Or/Blu and Or/Bk wires are supposed to be for your Battery Temp sensor. Do these wires have connectors on them? or are they cut? How long are these wires?
That lug with the two black wires is your temp sensor. It has no connection to the NEG post, it is just there to get a temp. You say it has two red wires but it looks like Tan and Pink in your pic? Are these the same two wires you are holding in pic 2 of 3? This doesn’t look right. Let me see if I can find what those are supposed to be but they don’t look factory installed.
See if you can follow these wires to see where they go. If they are indeed not tucked into your loom and just tied or loosly run outside of the loom they may be added wires by a previous mechanic. Your stock sensor wires may have been bypassed for some reason. Look under your hood and see if you can find the other end of these same two wires going to your charger. Perhaps the charger was replaced and someone didn’t know how to tap into the stock wiring for the sensor?
It totally may be related your charging problem. Your dash display just shows you that the charger is plugged in and the interlock is active to keep you from driving away with the car plugged in. To REALLY see what is going on look at the status lights on the charger itself. It can be seen if you look from the driver side wheel well up towards the master brake cylinder. With the car plugged in you should see a panel with the lights. If it is blinking, note the color and blink pattern. It may be telling you there is an issue. If you haven’t done it yet, reset the charger (unplug the power cord wait for ~20 sec and replug) and see if the error code/condition is repeatable or if it fixes the error and the charger goes into happy mode.
(getting back to the hanging wires)
Spend some time with a bag of zip ties and tidy up all these loose wires so they don’t get caught on things.
TIP: Do your future self a favor and find a pair of flush cut pliers for trimming off the excess zip tie flags. DON’T use regular dikes. You will know why when your arm brushes by one cut with dikes.
The battery post will give the most accurate reflection of the internal battery temp. Negative terminal for safety. Typically on the first or second battery in the string.
Sure- I get that. I was just trying to form a strong reason why it needs to be on that battery. On my 09 the loom comes up the center of the car under the e-brake handle. The sensor wires just naturally curve over that way.
If the wires come up from the harness on the passenger side, why do they need to travel all the way over to the driver side just to connect to that post? It looks like in his pic there is quite a length of wire floating around in there and could be cleaned up.
Also- note my recent edit. I looked at it again. Those may not be stock wires.
The 2 red wires were the only ones in the save vicinity of the orange/blue and orange/black wires so I’m fairly certain they were connected but it doesn’t look like the red wires were crimped. Will the charger charge the batteries if the temp sensor is not connected?
I’ll be back around the car in the morning and I’ll plug it in and check it
Thanks to the Postings that helped get this machine back to working. And thanks to the Original Poster for letting us know what solved his problem. This Forum is an amazing resource
