paalw

1983 Euro 928S

I have a strange problem with the ( ! ) warning lights. Both of them (in the centre of the pod, and in the centre console) light up irregularly and with varying strength. The warning lights are lit almost all the time, with varying power(sometimes it is actually off for some seconds before it slowly lits up a bit).

It seems to me that the warning shall probably be totally off, because when i pull the parking brake, it lights up like i beleive it should, if there is really something wrong. And i actually do not know of anything not working like it should on the car right now. But something, somewhere, is getting these bulbs to light up slightly and irregularly.

I have removed the engine ground cable and cleaned/sanded the posts and the cable, same with battery terminals and cable, and also the two ground points on each side in the front of the radiator in the engine bay. It made no difference in behavior.

Is this probably a ground issue? Can it be anything else? Any ground points that i haven't cleaned that should be addressed?

Very happy for any advice.

Here is a vid of the issue:

paalw

Nobody have any thoughts on this one? I guess i'll have to find the rest of the ground points and try cleaning all of them. Is there a ground point chart for the different models? I have seen a couple, but they do not match my 83 Euro S.

SeanR

It could be the same reason why a customer of mines car did something similar before the warning computer shorted out. A dickball stereo installer just jammed a stereo in this car with out actually looking at what he was doing. What you see here are the internals of the warn control button assembly with 5 or so wires pulled from the unit.

paalw

Sean, thanks, i have already been in there because the warn button and seat warning had no light at all. The same thing had happened in my car, the wires to the warning button were not connected and the bulb for the seatbelts were ripped off the circuit board like the ones in the picture. So - i thought i had found the source of the problem, but connecting and fixing this did not help other than that i actually got light in the button and the seatbelt warning.

Alan

Its not the lighting you need to be looking at its the voltage guage.

The lights vary because the voltage varies, the brightness of the bulb is very non-linear to voltage you loose most of the brightness at 9v. This is RPM dependant here.

Suggests several possibilities:

- Battery in need of replacement
- Alternator not generating well at idle (does charge light come on for bulb test?)
- Poor connection to the pod voltmeter circuit.

I think it's likely you have all these to some degree...

Does the headlight intensity vary in the same way? what is the voltage doing on the jump post? - so how accurate is the pod voltage gauge?

Alan

paalw

Alan, actually it is non RPM dependant. I know it looks that way in the video, and I feared people would think so because of that. I should have tuned my idle before shooting the video. Idle is just that tiny bit low so i get the "dip" in volts when going off the throttle, if i set it 50-100rpm up it is fine and don't have that dip at all.
When driving, ( ! ) comes on and of and half way on/off all the time, totally independent of RPM.

Alternator is 1 year/2000km old. Battery is 1 year/2000km old. State of connection to voltmeter pod unknown.

Alan

So does the charge light com on inbulb test mode?

How about the headlights doing the same thing or not?

Otherwise sounds more like a poor pod connection then..

Alan