850 courtesy light timer

dannyboy · Post by **dannyboy** » 26 Sep 2006, 11:15

As you all know, courtesy lights go on as soon as you unlock yours doors (remote control) or open a door and they go off automatically after a couple of minutes thanks to a built in timer relay unless you start the engine which cause the lights to go off straight away.
My problem is that even if I start the engine the lights still wait for the timer to put them off.

Any idea of what could cause this problem?

Thanks in advance to you all.

Post by **billofdurham** » 29 Sep 2006, 15:37

Could be the relay - #11 on the central electrical unit.

Bill.

mistercrunch · Post by **mistercrunch** » 27 Aug 2007, 06:43

Hi,

A bit of an old post I know, but only joined yesterday. Fantastic site by the way!

My '96 850 GLT has the exact opposite problem: the courtesy lights don't work. I can switch them on manually with the ceiling switches, but when the main switch in set to "door" they don't work at all. It's not the microswitches in the door, because the footwell lights do come on. According to the circuit diagram in Haynes, these are independent of the ceiling courtesy lights.

I suspect the relay, but I have no way of testing this. Also, before breaking completely, the lights were intermittent, sometimes working sometimes not. I read somewhere that someone replaced the caps on the fuel line relay after a similar intermittent fault; could I do this on the lighting relay?

Thanks, Pieter

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 27 Aug 2007, 08:50

I read somewhere that someone replaced the caps on the fuel line relay after a similar intermittent fault; could I do this on the lighting relay?

It can't hurt anything to try. Make sure that you get the polarity on the caps right.

...Lee