LCP
Club Guest
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2006
- Messages
- 725
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Sigh, now it's my turn to have a post-tung-tung-chang syndrome. Yesterday, upon arriving home from work and parking my car in the basement, immediately after turning the key to the full "off" position and pulling the key out, the interior lights come on as usual (basement is quite dark), but within a second or so, the lights went out altogether, suddenly. I then opened the door, still no lights either. Poked the key back in and turn to position 2 (the radio/accessories position), nothing happened (radio's not working, clock's totally dark, no mileage display, etc), although there was just a faint glow in the airbag light located on the steering wheel (indicating some remnants of capacitive discharge or just very very poor supply voltage). Turned the key further, none of the usual lights came on in the dash... tried to crank, nothing either. Full black out. Yanked the key out again, and then poked the key back, and repeated the above paragraph... nothing happened, I think the airbag light didn't even glow this time, still a total black out. Repeated the whole thing again to the same effect. Then I pulled the key out again and just sat there do nothing for maybe a minute or two, suddenly the interior lights came on again, and I put the key into the accessories position again, radio came on, but lost all the station memories/settings, clock came on, requesting that time and date be keyed-in again... and I then cranked the engine and it came to life, but I knew the ECU had also reset, the idle was hunting a bit, need a day or two to stabilise. So, there was a complete power failure, and it came back on again. It's like the battery got unplugged for a few minutes. What could have been the problem? I'm thinking of the following, pls let me know what you guys think and add your inputs also: 1) Battery going dead, showing intermittent and sudden power failure, some broken plates inside? I'm on a maintenance-free battery, no idea how long has it been in the car, I have had the car for a year now, forgot to ask previous owner when the battery was last changed. 2) Main cable fault, either: 2a) Ground cable connection from battery to the grounding point? 2b) Positive cable connection from battery to the "+" terminal on engine bay? (That terminal is called "B+ external start terminal") I think there is also a fusible link on the big fat cable, possible fault there also? 3) Key switch is faulty, but then why would the radio, clock, ECU and everything else be reset? As mentioned above, the effect is like the battery was unplugged for a few minutes. If the switch is faulty, electrical systems will not be powered up, but technically, those always "live" lines (radio memory, clock, ECU) should not go down. 4) What else? And is there any 94/95 E36 owners who had experienced such symptoms before?
