Neo Salenga

Heya fellas, new kid on the block here coming in hot with my first post. A short intro, i live in New Zealand, qualified mechanic, drive a RHD '05 35th anniversary bright yellow lemon, and should probably post this under the new member introduction if there is one.

Anyway, just wanna share what i've done to remedy the vdc off and slip light on which from my understanding alot of people are having issues with, not only with Zs and Gs but also other nissans. Keep in mind that my issue was accompanied with the c1109 battery voltage fault. Until you can get a hold of a scan tool, do go ahead and check the basics.

So a little backstory, i was driving home from a friend's house and the VDC off and SLIP lights lit up which i found weird considering i was driving sensibly, on a dry straight road, didn't feel hitting any bumps or anything. So i got on the net when i got home and found out that alot could trigger the VDC off and SLIP lights to go on (yeah i did alot of research)

Next morning i started the car and no lights on, left it to idle for 5 minutes while i make my coffee, came back and the lights are on. At this point i know it's not the speed sensors so i checked the obvious, brake fluid, brake pads and rotors, abs connectors for any water (i remembered giving the engine bay a little spray of water by the exhaust manifolds while i was cleaning up the mess i made with the coolant) and all was good. So i went to work and did a system scan/health check on the whole car and i got a fault in the ABS module, c1109 - Battery voltage. Great it narrows it down, so i grabbed a battery in stock, fitted it and crossed my fingers that was the end of it. Seemed like a logical solution since the battery was 5 years old but no that didnt fix the issue. (Also checked my alternator charging voltages and it was at a healthy 14.4V only dropping to 13.8V when loaded)

So the next thing i did was clean all the grounds, which there was alot of! So i'm just gonna list them for future reference.
-the battery negative obviously
-the one under the coolant reservoir
-the one close to the power steering bottle on the strut tower
-the one under the air filter box
-the one beside the abs module
-and the other one under the plastic engine cover on the engine itself
these were all i could find under the hood and to this point, it still didnt fix the issue.

Next day i decided, what the heck, i'll find the abs/vdc control module and check it's connector and ground cable connection to the body, after spending almost 2 hours and the dash was off.


and i found these ground connections underneath the dash


so i went ahead and took them off, one of them had early signs corrosion so i gave them a good sanding. Applied a small smear of di-electric grease to hopefully prevent the connection from corroding again as it's alot of work to get to these again and refitted them to the frame. So i plugged in the dash and that white box with the ribbon cable on the center under the radio, hooked up the battery and while i was there i thought i'd undo the 2 cables that's connected to the positive battery clamp and give them a sand and clean aswell (these were slightly discoloured, hard to explain but they needed sanding to expose fresh copper)

Started the car and waited. For a good 2 hours the car was idling with no vdc and slip lights to be found. At last the issue is fixed! So went ahead and put everything back together, drove the car around the block, still no lights. Tried it again the next day, drove 100km roughly and still no lights. I'll keep an eye on it and fingers crossed that it's actually fixed.

So long story short, if your VDC off and SLIP lights are on and is accompanied by the fault code c1109 Battery Voltage, clean your terminals and cables connected to the battery first before taking the dash out to save you half a day of pulling it out un-necessarily, only take the dash out to clean the grounds under the dash if cleaning the battery terminals and cables and the grounds under the hood doesn't work.
Also this is assuming that you have checked the obvious first, checked the alternator charging rate loaded and unloaded, and scanned the modules.

Sorry about the long post and i hope this would fix someone else's issues aswell. (P.S. i did search the entire forum but i never found this kind of fix)

813_350Z

An excellent way to kick off your new membership! Thanks for taking the time to write that up. Hopefully it will help someone down the road.

Welcome to the Z - fam.

dkmura

iTrader: (64)

Welcome and I second the kudos! So refreshing to see a complete post written in an understandable style. Certainly, it helps being a pro, but even pros may not be able to express how a diagnostic pathway works. You did it very well and I look forward to more posts about your Ultra Yellow Z in the future!

Neo Salenga

Thanks! I'll try post up strange issues i may come across with my Z in the future along with what i had to do to fix it, currently in the middle of diagnosing p1078 evt control position sensor circuit, will let everyone know once i've found a solution.