All within the past 24 hours on my beloved 2003 Ion: Yesterday morning while switching from VENT to DEFROST the horn sounded and lights blinked. Okay, thought maybe I bumped the panic button or door lock on the key fob. Not likely, but okay. 30 seconds later while driving, dash lights flickered and horn sounded for about 5-10 seconds. Embarrassing in traffic, but hey. Notice now that while I have dash illumination, my headlamps are not on and probably should be. Lights are in AUTO position, so I resort to switching to ON so that I have headlights. Finish drive to work with no issues. Got to work and noticed my key fob will not allow me to lock or unlock the car. Now this has me thinking that maybe my fob just has a low battery and perhaps all my issues are related to security?

Get home and try other fob. It doesn't work, either. Still noticing the headlight thing. Not a biggie, just have to remember to manually turn on and off headlights now and remember to lock the car by hitting the interior door lock instead of hitting the fob as I walk away.

THIS MORNING: turn on the wipers and no low or intermittent - ONLY HIGH SPEED. Also, they won't turn off. Dash lights again randomly turn on and off as I change the wipers. Can only stop wipers when they reach the bottom position or they stop abruptly wherevever I turn them off. Turn them on again and find I can't turn them off at all.

Is there something that would affect ALL OF THESE items at the same time? Up to this point the only thing that has failed to work within the past year is the cruise control. the on/off button illuminates but I am unable to set cruise. I can live with that.

Thanks in advance for any help.
Scott.

 

I'm not at all familiar with an Ion, so will only venture a guess as to MAYBE three things to check. The first would be the multi-function switch, then the BCM and lastly the clock spring. You'd better hope its NOT the BCM because one of those will run you about $350 from rockauto. Even higher from a GM dealership, IF they can even get one. Maybe derf or Andy will come along and have some better ideas. Or Bonestock. He's an Ion nut! LOL

 

NEW UPDATE TODAY - while it may not mean a whole lot, it is a repeatable occurance among many unexplained symptoms. When I start the car, even though the wipers are turned OFF, they operate at fast mode for about 10 seconds before "freezing" on the windshield. I then have to turn them all the way on and back off twice to regain control of them. Not that I can control the speed, but I'm able to turn them off when they are at the lowest position to clear them from the windshield.

 

With the horn sounding and the wipers going bonkers, might think the multi function switch is involved.

But with keyless entry also hosed, I'm leaning towards BCM. The BCM ultimately controls the signal that actuates the door locks. The RKE module is separate from the BCM I THINK .So the RKE module may be fine but the BCM is choking on its signal.

The lights I'm pretty sure are controlled by the BCM. The horn can be sounded without hitting the horn button if the alarm goes off so therefore the BCM must be able to control that as well. as for the wipers, I do not know where the motor control module is in an ion, but I'm afraid to guess how the speeds are controlled and how on-off are controlled other than the switch on the stalk. often the control modules are near the wiper motors themselves but again I do not know on an ion so I cannot say with certainty.

 

Look in the passengers sided kick panel behind the fuse box. I THINK that's where the BCM is. Maybe your cowl drains are clogged and the water has seeped in and corroded the connection. Ain't but one way to find out and that's to start looking. You might try youtube and a guy named richpin. He's got a lot of Saturn videos.

 

This will be top of my to-do list tomorrow morning. Not seeing anything that's causing a problem at this point. Bit of a nuisance. Definitely gonna need to make sure those wiper blades are unstuck this winter before attempting to start the car. Thanks for the advice!!

 

You can go to your local auto parts store and get one of the battery terminal removal tools. They work pretty good on removing the wipers if you have enough clearance to get them under the edges.

 

As life would have it, I didn't get to working on this this past weekend. Today's drive in was especially fun, though. The usual predictable things - wipers automatically starting in fast speed, no auto headlamps. As I allowed a couple of minutes to warm up, the illumiated gauges went black and back on several times in quick succession - then returned to normal. As I pulled from the curb and turned down the quiet neborhood street the horn began sounding for an embarrassing 20 seconds or so, all whild the gauges on the dash were all at about a 12 o'clock position, and my trunk opened. Then the horn stopped and the dash lights went out. I finished my 7 mile drive in the dark, with the only illumination being the TRUNK open light. The trunk secured itself when i hit a bump on a cross street but the alarm read they whole way into work. When I arrived, I went to turn the car off - but all my accessories remain on. Further, I am unable to turn the car back on. The dash display reads power steering, trunk, check engine among others. All the idiot lights are also on. I'm officially renaming this car "Christine." I assume this probably has everyone thinking BCM now?

 

That's where you'd be best off as a staring point. If not there, then the frigging multi-function switch in the steering column would be my next thing to check.

 

Christmas tree dashboard usually indicates BCM failure. What does the mileage read?