M42club.com - Home of the BMW E30/E36 318i/iS
DISCUSSION => Electrical => Topic started by: locknload on December 06, 2011, 03:35:52 PM
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Stinkin' lights are starting to tick me off. '91 318i. Everything on the SI indicator is off except the word "inspection" and the amber and red LED's. I've tried every reset DIY I can find, counted to 3, 9, 12 and beyond. Pulled the cluster, checked the battery voltage, each is 3.2v. (These appear to be the original Li batteries, and they still hold 3.2v?) Is there a "hard" reset procedure for this thing?
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Lemme check again. Pretty sure it's pins 9 & 17 for about ten seconds to clear the inspection light. Three seconds will clear the oil LEDs. Could also be a dead SI board regardless of battery level. Those lithiums last a lot longer than the NiCD's ever did.
Be careful about the pins you short...putting 12v from the starter circuit would ruin your DME (and your day).
http://www.noren.com/bmw/e30reset.htm
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That's the DIY I've been folllowing. Tried every permutation I can think of, still on. Would the fact that the odo gears are stripped have anything to do with it? Logically, it seems that with that being the case, the SI lights would never light up as the SI lights would behave as though the car were not being driven, but it shouldn't prevent them from being reset??
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http://www.esatclear.ie/~bpurcell/318ismaintenance.html
If you scroll down of just Ctrl+F "Resetting service lights" there's a little guide here on how to do it.
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Just saw this and had a glimmer of hope. Alas, it was for naught. With key switch to "ON", all lights are out. As soon as I start the engine, I get "INSPECTION" and the yellow and red LED's.
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At long last, the inspection light is out! It turns out, the fuel pump and instrument fuses (#10 & #11) were cross-wired, presumably at the factory. I don't see any other possible reason to switch them. The reason I could not reset the light was my instruments, being on the fuel pump circuit, were being controlled by the fuel pump circuit breaker, which means if the engine isn't turning, the fuel pump ain't pumping, so no power to the cluster. So, whenever I turned the key to #2 without starting the engine, the fuel pump would run when it wasn't supposed to and the cluster would switch off. No power to the cluster means no reset on the inspection light. Now I just have to figure out what has been driving my fuel pump all these years. Presumably, this is the first time the inspection light has ever been turned off.
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have you had the car since new? I'm not sure the factory would be to blame ...but at least you got the lights to go out.
Geoff