Lightning??

[JohnnyU]

Monday night we had a fierce storm rip through central Illinois. My uncle's garage was struck by lightning, his '03 D/A was parked in the garage at the time, but we pulled it out right after things calmed down, before the fre dept got there, so no damage. However, he now has no gauges, only a tach, and the transmission seems to be in limp mode (2nd gear) Did this lightning strike fry his computer?

He's going to tow it in for service today, what should we be looking for? Any forseeable ramifications down the road as far as the engine or transmission being damaged? I've never heard anything about lightning strikes, so I have no idea what to expect as far as damage. Thanks!!

[ratlover]

Well thats freaky. A big surge of static elctricity can fry all kindsa stuff but I dont see how it could cook any hard parts. Anything electrical could be game though. The allison is computer controlled and when it dosnt know what to do it will put itself in "limp" mode meaning you have 3rd gear park and nutral. Ussualy the NSBU switch is the cause of it not knowing what to do and it causes the limp mode. There is a tsb on this and mine died within a few 1000 miles and Green replaced it with the tan version of the switch and all has been fine. Make sure if he gets a new NSBU switch to get a tan one. The dead guages seems to be a somewhat comon thing too.

It would be one big of a coincidence for the NSBU switch to die at the same time as the guages and the same time as the lightning strike.

For the NSBU switch mine would normaly corret itself if I cycled from P to 1rst a couple times. That way I wouldnt be stuck in 3rd.

Did I mention FREAKY???

[snonut12]

Wow, never heard of something like that. Did the bolt of lightning went through the roof of garage? If so, did you find any damage on the surface on your uncle's truck?

But I don't think that the lightning necessarily would have to be in contact to the truck to mess up the electronic stuff, but it would have been close enough. When I took my major in electrical, I was taught that generally, very high voltage do not need to come in contact to cause an electrical shock (to human), but just close enough, depending on the amount of voltage. I am not going into depth about this, but I would assume that it also can apply to electronic components (probably much easier to mess up with since they are so sensitive).

[JohnnyU]

I thought the same stephen. That many volts would have created one heck of an electromagnetic field, knocking out computers and that kind of stuff.

I'll be sure to let you guys know what we find out.