Nope, no insurance involved. Basically the TIPM, or Total Integrated Power Module that Fiat/Chrysler uses, is the central point for everything that uses electrical power in their vehicles. It's not the brain, but the power source behind the brain I suppose. Anyway, there is a tendency for these modules to decide to do things on their own, at random, and without any way of tracking exactly what caused it. Common problems include the fuel pump not shutting off when the car is turned off, burning out the pump and occasionally causing fires, people waking up to find their windows down and the vehicle running with all the lights on in the morning, with the doors still locked and no key near it, or in my case the horn, wipers, washers all activating while driving down the road and not only did turning the key off not stop them, it also didn't turn off the engine. It's like the vehicle is possessed. And, it's random. I pulled the battery cables to shut everything down and let it sit. Hooked them back up and everything was fine. Figured I had a glitch and went to pick up another group of people. Well, three rides later with a family of 6 onboard it happened again. This time, though, I just turned the key off while still driving it and everything stopped, restarted the engine and it was all fine again. Fortunately nobody noticed the problem.
So, long story going even longer, I didn't buy any extended warranties with the van when I got it. Higher mileage, a bit older and a warranty for all of that would have still been more than I just paid. Which says something about how expensive the warranties are!! The good news - by having a dealer install the new TIPM it is now under warranty for 100,000 miles for any and all repair costs associated with it.
To make it even more fun, trying to diagnose it to make sure that was the issue (which is plastered all over the internet) they found that my power cable to run the passenger side door was frayed in a lot of spots which could have contributed to the issue. Add that part and labor to replace it. Then it needed coolant service anyway as part of scheduled maintenance. Add that on. Oh, those battery cables I had to play with? Clamps on those were in bad shape so there goes another couple of bucks. Oh yeah, needed software updates to get everything back up to speed so add a couple hundred more for that. The oil change was free, though, and the Service guy gave me an extra $100 off just because I think I passed the golden ticket amount on them making profit this month. This is the same dealership I sold used cars for a few years back so there is also the possibility that karma was involved at some point in this process.
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