2007 Dakota no power, solid red light(fixed)
Okay so you're never going to believe this(I certainly don't and I was there)! I'll try to summarize what happened and every fix I tried. Only a few minutes earlier I had changed my rear signal lights at a local part source right by my house. I got out of the truck after it had been running normally, tried to lock it with the remote and nothing worked. No power to anything, just a solid red light on the dash. First I tried jump starting which didn't work and the battery wasn't the problem anyway. I looked online and found out it was likely an anti theft security lockout which can be triggered for a number of reasons including old keys wearing out. I found 3 fixes for this which I tried. First was to disconnect the battery for several minutes to reset the system, second was to find the fuse for the ignition then remove it and put it back in which was also supposed to reset the system, third was to take your spare key if you have one(I do) put it in the ignition and switch it to on but not start for 20 seconds which should also reset the system and turn the red light off. Nothing worked. The tow truck shows up and he asks if I'm able to at least put it into neutral because he'd like to avoid dragging my truck if he can. I get in and try the keys and still nothing works, just a solid red light. I couldn't shift any gears at all. I still had the keys in the power on position and for some reason I decided to try pushing the brake pedal to see if there was some way I could get the gears to change. As soon as I pushed the brake the power suddenly came on as if nothing had been wrong. I made sure both of my keys were working. The Tow truck driver and I had a good laugh. I still had to pay for the service stop but honestly I was just relieved since that was far less money than taking it to the mechanic. He and I both wondered if it had something to do with the fact that I had just changed the signal lights only minutes before this happened. I guess I'll never know.


