One of my great Grandsons acquired a beater, 2001, Dodge Ram 1500 pick-up to use while away at university.
He brought it over for help with electrical issues; blower didn't work, wipers didn't work, one headlight was much brighter than the other, etc.
My first reaction was, there must be one or more bad grounds. I tested the theory by using a beefy set of jumper cables to securely ground several of the malfunctioning devices and, the problems went away.
We then set out to find where the circuits were grounded. After 15 minutes, we located a bundle of 13 wires, connected to a steel grounding stud, under the battery and spot welded to the wheel well fender.
What a ridiculous approach to electrical design, 13 wires of varying sizes crimped into one connector and not even soldered. The wires were not protected with heat shrink tubing or even with some kind of insulating electrical putty. With the bundle of wires under the battery, what engineer couldn't foresee battery related corrosives affecting the wires and connections... geez.
When we tried to loosen the nut holding the ring terminal to the stud, the stud itself crumbled and came off the fixing point. Seven of the ground wires were visibly broken. After cutting the terminal off and stripping the wires, we discovered at least half of the wires were compromised six inches under the insulation.
We dealt with this by cutting all the wires back to good copper, solder pigtailing each wire with fresh wire that was covered with a silicone insulation, inserting the pigtails into new, high quality ring terminals (2 - 3 per terminal) and, instead of crimping we soldered all the connections. We identified three good solid bolts going into the engine that we could use as ground connecting points.
All connections are now protected with heat shrink tubing and we put some duct sealing putty on the new ground bolts and ring terminals.
After a number of hours of work, everything in the vehicle works great. I came away very disappointed with how the Chrysler engineers designed the electrical system in the vehicle. I am not one to purchase American designed or manufactured vehicles anymore, and this experience reinforces that decision.