I'm a Mod in the FWD section but now need your help here.

[MadeInJapan]

I haven't posted in this section yet because I really didn't plan on working on this car for awhile, but I guess at least "tinkering" with it began yesterday. I bought a '91 240 sedan about a month ago. The speedometer is intermittent (and when it works, it reads about 10mph more than it should) and the odometer doesn't work at all. There are no codes when I check with the fly wire under the hood. It runs very strong and looks nice except for a bashed in rear end. Another side note, I am also buying a donor (parts) car from a friend who has the same model year sedan with a manual transmission (mine is an auto). So I have all the trim pieces and a new bumper coming. I was planning on pulling the bumper out and straightening the back myself or having it done for cheap and then doing a transmission swap in the near future. So I'll probably post again when I start into things.

Yesterday I went to a Pick-A-Part (junk yard where you pick your own parts off of wrecked cars). I found a similar model year 240 with a nice looking instrument cluster so I decided to get it and swap mine out, hoping that this would clear up the speedo anyway and possibly even the odometer. It didn't help anything and found out that it didn't have all the lights that my instrument cluster has- specifically the SRS light, so I swapped the original one back in. I figure that the speedo/odometer is a broken gear or for the speedo, since the signal is from a sensor on the rear differential, that might be where I need to look.

The problem I'm having now and need help with is that after I swapped back my old cluster I'm getting an SRS light that stays on. I've tried resetting everything with the fly wire as well as disconnecting the battery for up to 20 minute periods of time but that didn't work.

Is there some trick to this? I may have inadvertently grounded the SRS system by plugging up an instrument cluster that wasn't designed for my car...I don't know. I do know that it's light wasn't on before I tried the swap and now it's on and I can't get rid of it. I hate to drive this car around or worse yet (this is for my son when he turns 16 in a few month) have my son drive it if the air bag isn't going to work.

Any suggestion for diagnosing why this light is on and resetting it would greatly be appreciated.

David

[MadeInJapan]

Well, thanks to an email from George Dill from over on S.S., I solved the SRS light problem.

On my car at least there's an SRS panel under the radio. You fashion a jumper wire that is long enough to reach from this to the outer rim of the cigarette lighter. With ignition key to position II (engine not on) and after waiting 20 seconds, ground the jumper wire to the cig lighter outer ring for 3 seconds...the SRS light on the dash will begin to flash....1 to 10 flashes. Once it's gone through all of its flashing, touch the cig ring 3 times in 2 seconds (1/4 second at least each time), then the SRS goes out, comes back on and goes out again. Start car and if the SRS doesn't come back on, problem solved and it's reset. If it stays on then something's wrong ...and the flashes mean different codes (didn't get that far). My light went out...hooray!!

This might help others in the same boat as me.
Regards,
MIJ

[DeRail]

Thanks MIJ,

never would have guessed that would be the fix

Glad to hear it wasn't anything too serious though
Any chance Matthew could add this into the repair database?

Cheers
Darrell

[MadeInJapan]

Matthew can but so can I! DONE!
MIJ

[beefmaster]

I recently replaced the dash and instrument cluster in my 1995 850 and after doing so the SRS light was lit up, didn't have a problem before hand. Any chance that this reset would work on my car and if so where would the 'SRS panel' be located?

[jimmy57]

The 93-95 850 models have the SRS accessible in the diagnostic ports underhood.