Hi everyone, I acquired an '02 X-type last summer and initially loved the car but now that it's gotten cold it's giving me nothing but problems...

First off I had the alternator replaced because I was getting random warnings like DSC system fault, ABS, Check Engine and the battery/voltage warning. After testing my old alternator it seemed it was malfunctioning so I had it replaced, and although initially the lights went away they came back after just a couple days. Same lights, but now the battery light is pretty much always on and the check engine, ABS and DSC fault lights sometimes come on and sometimes not. My cruise control won't function when any of these lights except the battery light is on and having tested on an icy road I can tell the ABS also doesn't work (when the light is on, which isn't always). The battery tests fine and so does the new alternator, so I don't [I]think[I]they are the problem but I could be wrong.

I also head the headlights replaced at the time of the new alternator, but they seemed to vary in brightness on some nights and then after a few weeks the passenger bulb blew. When I replaced it with a new bulb, it wouldn't even come on so I assume there is an issue with the connection or something. A couple days after trying the bulb replacement the [I]other[I] headlight stopped working too, so I feel like there is definitely some type of electrical systems issue going on here.

Also, no matter what warning lights are on, I constantly have "Low outside temperature" flashing on my readout and hitting reset doesn't make it stop. The information display also seems to be inaccurate somehow. Sometimes, especially when my gas is fairly low, if I bring up the information on how many miles I can travel before I run out of fuel, the number will decrease at least 2 miles for every actual mile I travel in distance, so it makes it seem like I'm using twice as much gas as I should be...

A second problem is the heating and cooling system seems to function only at maximum heat or coolness. For example, when I run my heat when it's cold, once the car warms up it blows out really hot air like I had it set at HIGH even if I have it set at 70 F and sometimes unless I turn it down to below 66 degrees the temperature doesn't decrease at all. Same applies in reverse for the AC in the hot weather. It seems like maybe the thermostat that regulates the temp is malfunctioning or something.

Thirdly there is a loud fan in the engine that runs almost continuously whenever the car is running. This seems to have started after I got the new alternator put in, but I could be mistaken, I don't recall it being this loud before that but it almost never stops no matter if the car is just parked or actually in motion and if it does stop, it's only for a minute or two at most then it starts again.

And lastly, there is a faint buzzing sound that I hear when I turn the car off. It's like a small fan maybe? I can't identify exactly what the noise is, but it stays on for a LONG time when the car is not running. I sat in my car for almost an hour once after I turned it off and the noise STILL hadn't stopped. It must stop eventually because I don't ever seem to notice it when I start my car in the mornings, but it bothers me that something is running when the vehicle is turned off. Whenever I start the car, the instrumentation always flickers on and off one time too, like the dash and climate controls all come on as i'm turning the ignition, but then they dim out for a second and then come right back on and then seem to run fine...

Sorry for the huge post, but this has been driving me nuts and my mechanic (although good) doesn't seem to have a clue what might be causing all these electrical issues for sure and I'm not about to just start replacing everything he thinks it could possibly be without having a good reason to believe he's right.

Anyone have any suggestions as to what my problem/s may be? I would be most appreciative

 

Welcome to the forum.

Wow! You've got a lot going on there.

I would first concentrate on the battery/charging system (these cars are very sensitive to having the correct voltage and the computers can act up if they get started with low voltage and give all kinds of strange errors) and the cooling fans running constantly.

Our alternators are usually very robust. The fact you have a new alternator and a new battery seems to indicate the the cables may be causing problems. Check for cleanliness of all connections and see if either cable is heating up when running, indicating high resistance. If you can measure the voltage drop at various connection points it can tell you a lot.

The fan controller on the early models is known to fail. Usually they fail with the fans not running but I suppose the opposite is possible.

Get an OBDII code reader. It can lead you in the right direction when errors are displayed. Also add your vehicle description to your signature so anyone following your threads will know which car you have.

 

Welcome. There is a lot of good information and friendly helpful people here willing to help.

It sounds like you have a number of separate things going on.

Where to start? There are so many different things you describe and may or may not be related. The first thing I would recommend is to have any stored codes read and report the numbers back here. Better still, if you could have the codes cleared and then report back the ones that come back it would assure that whatever is going on is current and not just something stored from a long time ago.

The distance to empty is not meant to be a 1 to 1 thing. It depends on how fast you go, if you have to stop for a traffic light, your acceleration, etc. So, there will be some variation to that. If you are expecting to be able to fill up the tank only when it gets to 1 mile left you will probably get stranded at some point. It sounds like it is working fine.

The low temp warning is a feature some cars had. I think you can disable that, but do a search on here as I know this comes up every once in a while

The fans, could be the fan controller as they did seem to be problematic on the early cars, but they could also be functioning perfectly fine. Our temperature gauges are not linear. The needle will go up to just a hair below center and stay there. If the temperature goes up a little the needle will not move any farther until you are basically overheating. It's kind of a pass/fail thing. So, it might be possible it is running a bit hotter than it should, but not completely overheating. Check your radiator fluid level to make sure you do not have a leak. The expansion tanks eventually crack. Also, check the water pump. Those will eventually fail, 90K-100K seem to be the magic number. Also could be the thermostat. Hard to say.

The ABS issue could be the wheel speed sensor. Again, very common issues with our cars, but not that bad to get fixed. Search on here about that.

That humming fan sound you hear is probably coming from the dash area. Look just to the right of the steering wheel, left of the center vents on the dash. There is a little square with a round hole. Usually those get a bunch of dust and crud in there. Again, do a search on here and you should be able to find out how to access that and get that sorted.

As far as your heating and A/C, do search on here for "blend door". Chances are that is sticking. There is ton of information about that.

I think that covers everything. As you probably noticed, pretty much everything you listed as an issue I recommended you search on here mostly because all of those things have been covered in here a number of times and there are some very good, informative posts by some very knowledgeable people that explain way better than I could ever hope to. So, search each one of your symptoms on here and you should be able to pick them off one by one. Hang in there.

 

Thanks so much for all the info so far, I will check up on all the different things you guys suggested and I'll let you know when I have the error codes it's reading out!