Choppy Acceleration, Flickering Dash Lights

I don't know how you can stand your interior lights on the dash at full blast and MFD on too. But I guess to each his own so if while you're sitting there with the car running and the dash lights on bright If you run the dimmer wheel up and down fast a few times and then leave it back on bright does that make the flickering stop for a little while? If so it may be as something as simple as cleaning that wheel or replacing the dimmer switch in your case why bother replacing just wire the two wires or whatever together so that there is no dimmer available or even in place or if it's in place it's disabled so when you put the lights on everything else is that Max the wheel has no bearing anymore on any of it. In my older cars when I took that manual dimming wheel out of the picture the lights would no longer play these games. Other than that make sure your battery connections and all that are spot on and there's no crap on the top mount terminals all plugs fuse blades and all of that sort of thing are clean have no white corrosion or build up on them that's a lot of fuses to be checking but still they've been in there a long time You're in Colorado possibly snow country and all that so there are a few extra things you need to do that I don't have to do so much in the southeast United States electrical corrosion spots and all that sort of thing. You may want to look into that other than that you're driving an old car with probably an old HV battery possibly an old 12 volt battery it may be time that these things need to be balanced the 12 volt need to be replaced things like that your shop should be able to enlighten you The catalytic converter problem has basically been across the globe at least across the states there are tricks that can be done cat Shields may or may not work if the people have time they guaranteed will not work there is nothing that's going to stop that sawzall with the most modern cutting blades available at home Depot stores and elsewhere Good luck with that. Rig up an electric fence wire come up with a way to put it around the car lowly just above how high somebody would step on the three sides that you don't pull the car into Make it a little larger than the car so that they have to walk up and cross that threshold to get to the car they can't see one or two of the wires because they're so low they're liable to get the shock of their life on their way to it that may deter some and what have you I know in many of those places lots of people own nothing and they're stuck parking in the streets and all this other kind of stuff I did all this when I was a kid of course they weren't stealing catalytic converters back in '79.

 

how many miles on her? at some point, there are many things that need attention that are not in the regular maintenance schedule

 

If I live like that I would just keep a cattle prod close to the front door I'm a light sleeper anyway I'd love to catch somebody especially near a town home in a city limits trying to break into my car or break under my car to saw off a piece of metal I would shock that poor mofo so bad and so many times he would think he died and went to hale. And all the time might be laughing and talking junk wasting my time on a 2009 car please You deserve to be dead seriously I make no jokes about this You deserve your fate it's not even an antique not even a new car it's just a regular old piece of junk and you're out here trying to steal a crap pipe off of it give me a break You deserve what I give you.

 

ask your mech to look at the throttle body and maf sensor, they might need cleaning.

consider a cat shield, gen 2 are being stolen more than any other.

ask him to check the plugs, coils and injectors

 

there are cat guards, but even those are getting cut off pretty freuently. but they may deter a thief looking for quick hits