A few days ago my car battery died. Instead of going to a GM certified mechanic shop, I made the mistake of taking to Walmart's auto center. They told me they could replace the battery without much trouble. It took them over an hour after the van was in the garage with the hood open to replace the battery. The "mechanic" admitted that it proved to be harder than he thought but the battery is all set.

The next day I notice that little screen under the odometer that tells me the tire pressure, battery voltage, gas mileage, etc does not come on. It comes on with the engine is off but after the engine starts its gone. This evening I start the car and the headlights come on but nothing on the dashboard lights up and neither does the stereo and temperature control lights. I tried playing with the switch that controls the headlights but it just keeps popping up with a message about the headlight bulb.

I am afraid these amateurs at Walmart screwed something up when they were trying to replace the battery. My only guess is it might be a fuse issue or something reset when the old battery was unplugged. Any hints or advice would be appreciated.

 

Take it back to Walmart and have them correct the problem.

 

And risk having them make the problem worse? And that's assuming it was their actions caused the issue in the first place which I probably won't be able to prove.

 

Im no fans of Walmart auto center, there no mechanics by any means, useless other than to change tires.

but it seems to me that any idiot can replace a battery.

other than crossing the battery polarities what else can go wrong.

 

This battery replacement requires a little more work - there is a metal bracket on the way and a big fuse box almost on top of the battery. So many things not working means Walmart guys forgot to reconnect or displaced one of the fuse box cables. This is the first thing to check.

 

^^^

indeed - I had to remove the crossmember and the fuse box bolt to move it out of the way to get to the battery. Maybe something was accidentally disconnected?

 

Could it be possible that the battery died due to a faulty/dying alternator? It's certainly possible that Walmart could have had something to do with it but I replaced my '08 battery in about 30mins in my driveway a year or two back with no issues. Just remove the engine bay strut brace and fuse box (always hated this design on GMs!!).

But if battery connections are tight, I would consider getting the alternator tested.

Then again, a new battery should provide enough voltage for a least a little bit I would think but I'm not familiar with these newer ECM/computer controlled alternator setups.

 

It's not the alternator. If it was, every electric circuit would be affected, not just some.

 

The WalMart worker probably turned the instrument panel dimmer control to minimum accidentally.

I'm a retired electronics technician and years ago when I was on the road fixing televisions i would get calls on Monday morning from old-folks saying their television had no picture but it did have sound .
I would go to their house to fix the problem and find someone had turned the brightness & contrast controls all the way down .. and the screen was black.
I'd ask them if the grandchildren had been to visit on the weekend and they would answer "Yes, how did you know?"

 

^^^

Quite possible. In this case Walmart guys gonna laugh...