XKR – Fog Lights and Automatic lights on
The XKR was due for its annual MOT and so I did a quick check of the usual items, lights, horn, tyres etc. It turns out the front fog lights did not want to come on. This is an MOT failure so needed to be fixed. I started debugging by looking at the Fog Lamp relay. It had power and if I connected the drive to the relay coil to ground, on came the lights with no issue. Obviously it was the switching side of things. I took the centre console out and then the switch assembly. It looked fine and I confirmed that the switch (a momentary short to ground) was working fine. I then turned my attention to the Body Controller unit which is behind the passenger side “cubby hole” it was a bit if a pain to get it out. Once out I took it apart looking for signs of dry joints, heated components etc. No such luck so I tested the continuity of the wires involved and all seemed OK.
I put it all back together and went for a drive, still the same. A few days later I drove it at night for the first time in a while and noticed that the dashboard lights went off when the headlights were turned on. Side lights were fine, dashboard lights worked when they were on. So this led me to believe there was an issue with the indicator/light stalk. The auto function had never worked since I had owner the car and now it looked like there was a secondary issue with it.
A quick look on youtube followed, on how to remove the covers around the steering column and then worse case, take off the steering wheel. Having removed the covers, it was immediately apparent the issue was due to two wires no longer connected to the switch as per the photo. There was no easy way to tell where they came from so I had to take the steering wheel off and get a better look.
I carefully removed the airbag having disconnected the battery and shorted the live to chassis to discharge any residual current in the system. Removed the two screws holding in the switch and then I could clearly see the pins and wires. A close look with a magnifying glass revealed two contacts on the switch showed signs of the remains of broken wires. I did spend a little while trying to identify which wire went where. I also did some internet searching as well but failed to identify which way round they went. The circuit diagrams do not go into the level of detail between the stalk and the external cabling plugs.
Well there were only two wires so not a lot of choices. I decided the longest wire, the green one went on the outside and the other went to the inner contact. I soldered these on and hey presto, the front fog lights now worked. A few hours later I tested it in the dark and I had also fixed the dashboard lights and the auto function also worked!
Later that evening I logged onto my laptop and started to close down all the various windows I had opened during my searches. There was one PDF about interior lights dimming when the indicators were used. Sure enough there was a picture in the PDF that clearly showed a wire broken off of the same indicator stalk. At least it proved to me that the wires were now in fact in the correct place but I could have done with seeing it earlier 🙂
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