Author Topic: Help.....Service Indicator Light Issue (Read 5232 times)

beta14ok · « **on:** May 17, 2009, 09:57:01 AM »

Service indicator lights are screwy, stay-on, and will not re-set!

Yesterday I had 3 job to do on my little red 318is
1) Fix the odometer
2) replace my stock steering wheel with a nice wood-trim Momo wheel
3) fish-out the wires for the foglights and wire to the dash switch (my car didn't have the fogligts originally...but the wires are there for the taking)

I purchased a set of gears from http://www.odometergears.com/ and the job was relatively easy...the odometer works fine now. Everything else went fine. the car looks great!:)

But the Service indicator lights are screwy, stay-on, and will not re-set! :mad:

Here's the situation:
"Inspection" indicator Blinking
Green light 1 off
Green light 2 on
Green light 3 on
Green light 4 off
Green light 5 on
Yellow light off
Red light off

After a reset....the green lights and the blinking "Inspection" letters stay on!:eek:

I've been reading...but I can't find any info on this issue.

Please HELP.

beta14ok · « **Reply #1 on:** May 17, 2009, 05:16:30 PM »

I pulled the instrument cluster back out of the re-assembled dash (What a pain!! ),
1) disconnected each of the circuit boards and meters,
2) then cleaned all of the contact points with alcohol,
3)gently tightened the springs on all of the circuit board contact clamps (used a jewelers screwdriver to push the spring on each side of each pin-clamp toward the center line...no gaps).
4) re-re-assembled

The problem has been corrected!:o:)

Man these things are delicate. I'm half tempted to pull it out again and just solder everything together, but then that would make fixing it next time even more of a pain.

quinn11m20 · « **Reply #2 on:** May 17, 2009, 06:00:48 PM »

I had the same issue. I replaced my SI board with the batteries and all. Do you know what i am talking about? The Inspection light went away after that. Someone told me back in '98 that after 100k the inspection light stays on regardless. Not until the beginning of last year did I change it. Cheers.

beta14ok · « **Reply #3 on:** May 17, 2009, 06:44:37 PM »

I hear you....If you figure that these things are rattling around in there for 100K+ miles....then they act up......I feel confident that is exactly what the local shop would have told me to do.....replace the SIB.

Makes me wonder how many SIBs or whole instrument clusters have been replaced just because of bad electrical connections oon the circuit board.

quinn11m20 · « **Reply #4 on:** May 17, 2009, 10:06:27 PM »

I don't think its based on bad electrical connections. One of the other members has a write up about changing just the SI batteries. I replaced the whole board, to save the aggrivation of soldering stuff together. The whole discussion was really based up on jumpy guages. Like for instance my temp guage and fuel guage dance around sometimes. The fix was to replace the SI board or the SI batteries. Follow. So if you have jumpy guages this is a fix. Unfortunately for me, I replaced the SI board to counter act my jumpy guages and well the inspection lights went away but my guages still jump around ...once in a while.