goes/went/has gone, which tense is correct?

Question

1. Dad, something goes wrong with the machine. Can you help me fix it?
2. Dad, something went wrong with the machine. Can you help me fix it?
3. Dad, something has gone wrong with the machine. Can you help me fix it?

I am confusing about the usage of the tense. Which sentence above is correct?

Answer 1

1. The use of the present tense indicates habituality, or a state of being. You're saying here that the machine - as a habit - goes wrong. This is the one that sounds the oddest to me considering the context you are implying.
2. The use of the past tense indicates that something has happened at one point in the past. This phrasing works in this context.
3. The use of the past perfect indicates that something happened as a process, in the past. This puts the emphasis on the fact that what has gone wrong did not happen suddenly. This also works in the context you are using.

I would conclude that using 2 and 3 are both equally correct, where 2 puts the emphasis on the fact that machine is not working, while 3 puts the emphasis on the process that made the machine go wrong. 3 also implies that you have observed either what made the machine go wrong, or that you know the symptoms of the machine going wrong.

Answer 2

All three are grammatically valid. However, the semantics of the first make it unnatural and likely to be met with confusion by a native speaker. If you want a present tense, to say you want help because something is in the process of going wrong, you want the present progressive:

Dad, something is going wrong wrong with the machine. Can you help me fix it?

That means it is going wrong right now, like the machine is behaving very strangely but possibly still functioning. At least, that's the potential nuance. What is more definite is that you are currently interacting with the machine when you say it, or at least observing it in some way.

Your second example, went wrong, is the simple past, and suggests that something has gone wrong at some point in the past. For nuance, this would most likely mean you weren't with the machine when it went wrong. You left it unattended, went back to it later, and something went wrong with it in the meantime.

The third example, has gone wrong, sits somewhere between the two. It's the present perfect, and suggests that it went wrong recently. Maybe you were using at the time, maybe you weren't, but you give the impression that whatever it is has 'finished' going wrong and the machine is now in a settled state. It might be a broken state, or it might look fine but you can tell because of the machine's output that something has gone wrong with it while it was doing whatever.