I have a 98 Dodge Caravan that has been causing a lot of grief. Every once in a while, after shuting off the vehicle, while trying to restart, it appears to us that the stock alarm system is causing the van not to start.
Symptoms are the alarm set light comes on even if it has not been physically activated/turned on...after that it gives you 3 tries to start it (meaning you have to get lucky doing the cycle of: lock doors, unlock doors-after alarm set light goes off, then open the door and close the door) before it locks you out, meaning will not even turn over. When this happens, you might get lucky and only wait an hour for it to let you try and start it again, otherwise sometimes takes up to 2 hours or more. If it dosen't start, you have to wait the whole cycle out again to try again. This is a real pain when you have a 3 year old with you :S
Other problem is, while driving down the road at any time, the whole dash will go out, speedometer and all! Is there anyone who can help, that can maybe suggest what the problem may be and how we can maybe fix this without having to pay out more than what the van is worth???

 

This is an old thread, but for anyone having this problem, this sounds precisely like what happened to my 98 Grand Caravan a few years back. The problem? Loose ground solder connections on the instrument cluster circuit board. The fix? New board installed by the dealer. There have been many, many others with the exact problem. Do some searches. Some tech savvy people have done their own resoldering, but the rest of us just need to pay the $$ to get the new board with the dealer. It fixed my problem for good.