Car dashboard has died (and no indicators / brake lights)

duncan32

Hello,

Not sure if this is really the place to post this (I do have the car booked into the garage for Thursday), but it would be nice to get some feedback if anyone is qualified to advise me. My Fiat Marea has lost power to the dashboard (the speedo, petrol gauge etc stuck on zero, as if the engine is turned off). There is also no power to the indicators or the brake lights. All other things seem to be working without any problem, though. I have had a look at the fuses under the dashboard and none of them appear to be blown, so I don't think it's any of those. I think there may be further fuses under the bonnet, perhaps, but don't really want to get too involved in taking things apart, to be honest. Does anyone have any wise words to share with me on what this could be OR anything that I could also check to try to save my money from going to the garage!

Thanks in advance.

Duncan

Jaffa.

It's probs a lose wire on the return for the power causing the whole lot to power down A long shot but try moving the steering wheel up and down...

KeithP

Duncan, try posting your query on a Fiat users forum. You may get a more focused response.

theartfullodger

I had a Lexus GS300 which from time2time would go completely black dash-board. No idea how much fuel, what speed, any warning lights..

If I disconnected the battery, counted to 10, reconnected it it usually worked.
Unlikely you will seriously damage your car doing that.

Cheers!#


Lodger

Bowling_4_Gold

I don't know if its really related, but we had a Fiat Siecento a couple of years back, and the speedo just didn't work... right before the MOT! luckily, because they don't actually drive the cars for the MOT anymore, they didn't see it was broken. We took it to a local garage and the poor bloke spent the whole day feeding the new cable (we bought off eBay) into place. Don't know if its similar to your problems, but maybe you just need a new cable like we did.

DatabaseError

french cars, eh?



(ex owner or an espace and clio before I learnt my lesson!)

Jaffa.

DatabaseError wrote: »

french cars, eh?

Lmao!!!!!!

duncan32

Fixed it myself!!!!! Was just a fuse in the end. I had checked most of them and then looked at the handbook and it showed that a certain fuse was in charge of what was going wrong, so I assumed as that fuse wasn't blown something else must have been up. Anyway, yesterday I looked at ALL of them just to be sure and one WAS blown and when swapped it all came back on. So, the handbook is wrong, which is ALARMING!!!!

Thanks for the advice,

Duncan

:beer:

spud17

Well done, I've had a fuse that was hanging by the thickness of a human hair, which gave continuity with a meter but would not allow enough juice through to light the headlight.

I've had a Fiat and an Alfa in the past and whilst both were brilliant to drive and had really good engines .............now the electrics, that was a different matter.
Ball of spaghetti springs to mind.