I have a '82 300DT. Recently (in the last week) I've had three lights on the dash stay lit,come offandon or go from on then off then dim. Those three are also the ones that come on when I go to start my car. (They would be the lights for the battery, the circle one (I don't know what that one is for.) and the one for the emergency brake.) Now, this morning I didn't have any power in my battery. Should I be looking at my fuses, a loose wire, or the alternator. The alternator and battery were new in Sept '06.

I'm new at this, but I really love my car. And I'm trying to learn and fix things that are going wrong with it, instead of the mechanics telling me almost nothing and just expencting me to fork over lots of money to them.

Any advice that I can get would be very helpful.

 

The circle one should be your front brake pad wear indicator. It's going to come on and off when braking or during regular driving whenever you need new pads and rotors. Maybe that's the cause of the emergency brake indicator coming on as well?

The power issue could be a thousand things. Have your battery tested to see if it holds a charge, a local walmart TLE department or mechanic should be able to do that.

 

I'll check the battery out myself tonight. I was just wondering about the lights because all three of them come and go as a set. I wouldn't think that that the two brake lights would have anything to do with the battery. And they don't stay bright, they go to dim, sometimes shut off, then come back all three together. It just seems a bit weird.

As far as the mechanics go, I'm having problems with them here in Iowa. To get my glow plugs replaced I had to go to a desiel truck place (who will not deal with electrical issues). Maybe I'm expecting too much that if I'm paying someone 100/hr to work on my car that I won't be treated like I shouldn't even be touching my car. So if anyone knows of a good mechanic here, please let me know.