service indicator lights wont go off even months after doing manual reset

[selespeed]

i did a manual service reset in july following the methods described by shorting pin 7 with ground...

all the service lights had turned green. great. but i feel something's not right. even after months of driving an d more than 10000km later the lights do not go off one by one. what is wrong?

[monty23psk]

Your SI Board is bad or the most probable reason, your batteries on the board need to be replaced.

[selespeed]

why would you think so? the LED lights are brightly lit. they just won't go off!

[monty23psk]

do research and you will see, the lights is never the issue. I have dealt with this many times already as well as others on the other boards. Its the function that has the issue, like reseting. Also, eventually this will cause a larger drain on the battery because the charging of the batteries will never stop, even with the car off. Also, the gauges, RPM and MPG will get affected. They function through the SI board. My 2nd SI board in owning my car for 10 years started with this last year, reseting not working... I just replaced it.

[selespeed]

do research and you will see, the lights is never the issue. I have dealt with this many times already as well as others on the other boards. Its the function that has the issue, like reseting. Also, eventually this will cause a larger drain on the battery because the charging of the batteries will never stop, even with the car off. Also, the gauges, RPM and MPG will get affected. They function through the SI board. My 2nd SI board in owning my car for 10 years started with this last year, reseting not working... I just replaced it.

you said "resetting not working... i just replace it".

replace what? replace the entire instrument cluster?

you also mentioned "charging of batteries". are instrument cluster batteries charged as you use the car?

what decides the service lights going off based on mileage and duration of use? is this decided by DME or the instrument cluster has some logic built into it? all lights on the instrument cluster are brightly lit. thus, i think the issue is not the battery.

thank you.

[monty23psk]

The SI board or the you can try the batteries. It does require soldering.

Yes batteries are recharged by the car.

I believe it goes by mileage but never really researched it as I never used them for my maintenance. The car itself (alt/battery) gives voltage to the board, hence how the bulbs are powered and lit. The battery is used to retain the memory in the board logic. The batteries would remember to keep things on or off.  So the issue could be the batteries or the board itself.

[selespeed]

i am not sure why everyone is pointing definitely to weak batteries or simply batteries be the culprit? i recently had a "clock" sign light up. and the fact that the LED lights are bright suggest that batteries are unlikely to be the issue. could it because i have reset the service lights using the paper clips too long?

if batteries are the issue here, then those lights would not be brightly lit up.

- econometer works well.
- speedo works well
- rev meter works well
- all lights on the cluster work well. no sign of weak batteries
- brake warnign lamp, alternator, oil pressure etc all work normally and ok.

- the damn LED service lights just refuse to go off even after 4 months./

[monty23psk]

My SI light were not able to reset for over one year and all my gauges would work fine. I replaced the SI board w/new batteries and now I can reset the light. Like I stated before, the lights are not powered from the batteries. The batteries only retain the memory of the system, not light up the lights.

[selespeed]

i thought the batteries are responsible for powering up the LED lights?

[monty23psk]

They are not. Unplug the car battery and check for your self.

[selespeed]

what i mean is the SI batteries are the ones responsible for the cluster LED lights right?

[DesktopDave]

No. The Service Interval LED lights/inspection/timer and the entire gauge cluster are powered by the car's primary starter battery & electrical system. The SI board batteries only provide power for the SI board memory chip. If the SI batteries are dead, the memory chip doesn't store the settings, so the inspection & timer lights will never go off. There are a few different variations of the SI batteries, be sure to get the correct replacements. The NiCD version can also have a single cell fail, which causes all sorts of odd results.

[selespeed]

No. The Service Interval LED lights/inspection/timer and the entire gauge cluster are powered by the car's primary starter battery & electrical system. The SI board batteries only provide power for the SI board memory chip. If the SI batteries are dead, the memory chip doesn't store the settings, so the inspection & timer lights will never go off. There are a few different variations of the SI batteries, be sure to get the correct replacements. The NiCD version can also have a single cell fail, which causes all sorts of odd results.

Hi Dave;

Hmmmm.... I remember clearly that the LED lights light up when i turn on ignition key with my main car battery disconnected.

I will disconnect the main battery and test if the SI lights light up? According to your explanation it should not since these are powered by main battery right?

So let me get this right...

- SI batteries only power SI memories and no lights
- Main car battery powers all other things - revv meter, econometer, speedo, LED lights and all other warning lamps on the cluster. is this correct?

I have been driving my car since February 2004 and I have never changed the SI batteries. I have done some 564,000km so far. And the cluster has never failed. What is the lifespan of these SI batteries?

thanks.

teo

[selespeed]

No. The Service Interval LED lights/inspection/timer and the entire gauge cluster are powered by the car's primary starter battery & electrical system. The SI board batteries only provide power for the SI board memory chip. If the SI batteries are dead, the memory chip doesn't store the settings, so the inspection & timer lights will never go off. There are a few different variations of the SI batteries, be sure to get the correct replacements. The NiCD version can also have a single cell fail, which causes all sorts of odd results.

i just disconnected the main battery and then turned on the ignition key to ON and found that the SI lights and none of other lights are on. So you are right about the main battery powering these lights.

I just dislike taking out the SI cluster... too much work. the last time i took this out was in 2004 to change the melted plastic gears for the speedo.

now, is the battery easy to replace? i heard some saying these batteries have to be soldered and i don't like this. these are rechargeable batteries of industry standard size i guess?

thank you.

[monty23psk]

Thanks and I guess you are starting to believe Dave and I. In regards to the battery, they are soldered. If you decided to try it your self, you need to find rechargeable batteries, have them charged, which can be a challenge as the batteries must have soldering tabs. If the batteries leaked and damaged the board or there are bad solders, the batteries won't help. A new board with 1 year warranty is around $150. There is no way to delete the board like older BMWs. I tried once to do the batteries and was more of a pain. Swapping the board is very easy IMO.

Good luck