this problem is happening to my friend's 97 coupe.

a few weeks ago after a dusk drive he parked the car at home and turned off the lights, but the lights remained up. here are the things we know don't work right now. the headlights will not go down, the dash instrument lightning is dead, the tail lights don't work (brake lights do though), the fog lights/button don't work.

my friend manually put the headlights down. yesterday we checked all of the fuses and did not find a problem. i switched in a 30A fuse to the slot for the headlight maxi fuse and the headlights came up. we thought we had gotten somewhere...nope. the headlight would not go back down. we put the fuses back to the original configuration.

next i removed the batteries connections and cleaned them good. when i reconnected the positive terminal the lights went down. but they won't come back up though. during this we never got the tail lights or instrument lights to work.

and finally when we were calling it quits my friend gets in and the driver's seat and now it doesn't work :crazy: so he drove home with a pillow behind him!

any suggestions? bad ground? it sures seems like something systemic seeing as so many things are not working. my friend and i have maxed out our technical abilities here, so he may have to go to the dealer next :eek:

thanks :seeya

 

Hard to tell but I checked the service manual.
The most common part is the BCM. This sits under the passenger side foot board.
Clogged AC drain hose will fill this area with water/moisture. (known problem)
Further there could be a problem with the communication between different modules.
Also your description started from several weeks ago and then jumped to yesterday. Was the car running fine in between?
Your friend's best bet is getting the service manual of his car, a voltmeter and start from there.
Sorry can't give you a definite answer with the information available.

Roger :seeya

 

Could be the BCM I suppose; check it out. It also sounds like a major ground problem. Someone can probably post a schematic. The manual would be a good purchase. :yesnod: :)

 

thanks for the tips. i think his best bet is to just take it to the dealer now.

 

:iagree:

 

i'm betting its one of these three things:

1. bad computer (due to water leakage on passenger floorboard from ac drain plug being clogged up)

2. bad computer due to leaking battery

3. bad ground

 

This post is actually about my 97 MN6 Nassau Blue Coupe. I was told that buying a new headlight switch would fix the problems with my headlights, etc, however it didn't. I knew that it was weird that my power driver's seat decided to quit working as well. I got home and checked the fuses another time. Sure enough the #4 fuse (drivers seat controls) had blown when we where swapping fuses earlier in the day ro see if we could fix the other issues. I didn't figure this out right away because there are two different fuses for the driver and passengers seats that I had already tried swapping. Now I can at least reach the pedals to drive. :auto:
I wouldn't be suprise if the BCM is the problem. Is there is a way I can assess if the BCM is my problem, or will I have to take my car to the dealership and pay them $75 to diagnose my problem? Maybe I should just spend the $ on a service manual and voltmeter?
Other than this problem with my head lights not coming up/going down, I love this car! I recently installed new Borla Quad-Oval Stingers thanks to the help of rutiger. I will update my signature with pictures soon. Thanks for all of your help rutiger! :cheers:

 

you sound like a do-it-yourselfer. go for it! :)