New SI Control Board - ECONO GUAGE STILL DOES NOT WORK!!!!!

Tue Jan 10, 2006 1:46 pm

Hey all

I have just bought a new SI board from the stealers for an arm and a leg.
I fitted it last night and now my temp and rev guage work but the econo guage just moves from one side to the other. When Iam idling it is at 30 litres per 100km and when I am coasting it is at 0 litres per 100km. Never gets onto anything else. Seems that I also cannot reset my SI lights now. They are stuck on the 4 green lights - cannot get them to clear. I thought all this crap would clear up with a new SI Board.

Anyone had this problem. I mean what else could be wrong with the cluster????

Thanks
BeemaBoy

Tue Jan 10, 2006 4:01 pm

Did the new board have regular AA sized batteries, or the short lithium ones ?

If it has AA sized batteries, did you move the little switch to engage the batteries ?

If you have the AA sized batteries and you did move the switch, you may need to leave it connected for a while to allow the batteries to charge up before everything starts to work correctly.

Ian.

Tue Jan 10, 2006 6:06 pm

ian332isport wrote:Did the new board have regular AA sized batteries, or the short lithium ones ?

If it has AA sized batteries, did you move the little switch to engage the batteries ?

If you have the AA sized batteries and you did move the switch, you may need to leave it connected for a while to allow the batteries to charge up before everything starts to work correctly.

Ian.

top info

Tue Jan 10, 2006 11:00 pm

can i ask how much the new board cost??

Tue Jan 10, 2006 11:09 pm

BeemaBoy wrote:Hey all

I have just bought a new SI board from the stealers for an arm and a leg.
I fitted it last night and now my temp and rev guage work but the econo guage just moves from one side to the other. When Iam idling it is at 30 litres per 100km and when I am coasting it is at 0 litres per 100km. Never gets onto anything else. Seems that I also cannot reset my SI lights now. They are stuck on the 4 green lights - cannot get them to clear. I thought all this crap would clear up with a new SI Board.

Anyone had this problem. I mean what else could be wrong with the cluster????

Thanks
BeemaBoy

Trying to stretch my mind back several years for this one, but ,IIRC, there's a resistor on the speedo PCB that burns out. It feeds speed info to the econometer.

Tue Jan 10, 2006 11:12 pm

ian332isport wrote:Did the new board have regular AA sized batteries, or the short lithium ones ?

If it has AA sized batteries, did you move the little switch to engage the batteries ?

If you have the AA sized batteries and you did move the switch, you may need to leave it connected for a while to allow the batteries to charge up before everything starts to work correctly.

Ian.

Would have thought that all dealer supplied replacement boards woulod be lithium type, but these have a jumper to switch them on as well.
Jumper pins are not fitted to OE boards, but the holes are there in the PCB for them.

Wed Jan 11, 2006 9:30 am

Brianmoooore wrote:
ian332isport wrote:Did the new board have regular AA sized batteries, or the short lithium ones ?

If it has AA sized batteries, did you move the little switch to engage the batteries ?

If you have the AA sized batteries and you did move the switch, you may need to leave it connected for a while to allow the batteries to charge up before everything starts to work correctly.

Ian.
Would have thought that all dealer supplied replacement boards woulod be lithium type, but these have a jumper to switch them on as well.
Jumper pins are not fitted to OE boards, but the holes are there in the PCB for them.

Brian,

I would have thought the same until I bought a new one last year that was fitted with the bigger Ni-Cad AA sized cells. They do it on an exchange basis, so I guess they get old boards refurbed and put them back in stock. My new board had a small switch fitted to allow the batteries to be switched out of circuit for storage.

Ian.

Wed Jan 11, 2006 11:01 am

They seem to be the short lithium ones and the board has the jumpers on the top, right next to the batteries. I did move the jumper across as per the printed instruction sheet that came with the PCB.

As for price, it cost me about R1390.00 (South African Rand). Would be about 120 pounds I think

Intresting thing about the burnt out resistor. Is there any way to fix this??? - without a new cluster???

How long would you guys think it would take to fully charge the batteries?

BeemaBoy

Wed Jan 11, 2006 5:55 pm

If it's lithium batteries, they are not rechargeable. They only power the board when the car battery is disconnected, so don't normally do anything.
Re: the cluster with the burnt resistor. I replaced this resistor, but not the SI board, and the gauge still didn't work. Car was sold shortly after, and ever since when I've come across this (rare) problem, I've just replaced the whole ckluster.

Thu Jan 12, 2006 9:41 am

Ok, well in that case we are back to square 1. If the batteries cannot be re charged then everything should be working.

I still cannot reset the SI lights. It is still sitting on 5 green LED's and the inspection light has come on???
When I put the SI reset tool in the socket, nothing happens to the SI lights or inspection light. Has BMW changed the way the SI lights reset or something?

Many Thanks
BeemaBoy

Thu Jan 12, 2006 1:01 pm

BeemaBoy wrote: I still cannot reset the SI lights. It is still sitting on 5 green LED's and the inspection light has come on??
BeemaBoy

Eh? 5 green LEDs is the fully reset condition.
Inspection light with the clock symbol is simply a 12 month timer, and is reset seperately from the LEDs.
Resetting is done by earthing pin 7 of the diagnostic socket for a certain length of time with the ignition on, and has not changed.

Thu Jan 12, 2006 1:45 pm

Brianmoooore wrote:
BeemaBoy wrote: I still cannot reset the SI lights. It is still sitting on 5 green LED's and the inspection light has come on??
BeemaBoy
Eh? 5 green LEDs is the fully reset condition.

Oh

So what does this mean? That the lights are in a permanant reset??? Also, "Inspection" has come on, but no clock symbol.

This is exactly what it used to do on the old SI Board.

Ever get the feeling that you just threw a significant amount of money in the crapper

I thought that all of this stuff ran off this annoying SI board! I cannot recall how many reviews and posts I have read saying that replacing the SI board cured everything...

Thu Jan 12, 2006 1:51 pm

After resetting the LEDs you should have 5 green LEDS when you switcth on the ignition. These should go out when you start the car.
Every thousand miles or so, one of the green LEDs should go out.
When the last one goes out, the yellow LED will light and will stay on withj the engine running. After about another week or so the yellow LED will go out, and the red one come on.
The ins. light should only come on with the oil service light or the clock symbol. These are filament lamps, and may be blown.

Thu Jan 12, 2006 2:49 pm

Oh, I feel like an arse

Iam getting angry here and I don't even know how my car works

Ok, so basically, in about 1000 miles I should have 4 lights and not 5? Cool.
On the other hand, how do I reset the other things like inspection and oil service. I don't think that the bulbs have blown because they all used to light up occasionally with the old SI Board.

Come to think of it - there were 5 LED's on my old SI board

, but they never used to reduce by 1 ever!

Hmmmmmm...

Thanks
BeemaBoy