While driving my car, the air bag, tcs, and abs lights all came on. I can't use the button to turn the tcs on or off.. it's always off from start up. What could this be? Relay?

Thanks,
Steve

 

Probably a bad ground. Most of the dash lights get their ground from a ground post mounted on the passenger side inner fender, right next to the red positive cap. Pull the negative terminal off your battery, remove all the grounds from the ground stud, remove the stud, clean the paint off the fender under the ground post (sand paper works), clean the ground stud, then reconnect everything.

 

what are you talking about The instrument panel gets it's ground from 3 points, One is above the starter, one is at the base of driver A pillar and the other is under the driver seat. And a bad ground to the instrument panel will NOT make his ABS, TCS and air bag lights come on.

You got a tough one, look at all the fuses BUT there is not a fuse common to all the lights you are getting.

 

Hmm... if it helps, my friend just installed a manual fan switch, electric water pump switch, and water pump watchdog for me... I would think if the wiring had messed with those systems to make the light turn on, it would have happened immediately and not a week later. So, I'll check all of my fuses tomorrow. Could a relay have gone bad?

 

Time to get it scanned. Let us know what the codes are. We can help.

 

Mine did this when my 3rd brake light burned out....check that first....

 

Can you pull stored codes with Datamaster?

 

Overall low voltage can make those lights come on. If you just had some wiring done, make sure there is not something that is draining your battery.

 

Slopokrodrigez,

After spending an afternoon chasing down mystery dash lights with an ohm meter I know for a fact that a portion of the grounds terminate on the passenger side fender (confirmed by the Helms manual). I didn't state that ALL the grounds are located there. Cleaning the fender ground post solved my dash light issue. If you do a search on this ground post you'll find it's a common problem. I'm not saying this will definitely solve this guy's problem since later he posted that switches have been added to his system, but it's a place to start.

 

Your assumption for the connection was incorrect as to its routing but you may inadvertantly found the problem. I quote:
Which is WRONG. Not one of the instrument cluster grounds, bulbs or otherwise, goes directly to the passenger fender ground post G101

A bad ground to a bulb will not make IT turn on. It could cause a sensor/system to malfunction and thus the system lights the corresponding light to indicate the sensor is malfunctioning.

The ground point in question on the fender has 5 wires which are split by splices to 8 different items. They are as follows: 1 wire goes to the battery, 2 wires go to splice 111 which inturn goes to the left and right front ABS pressure valve solenoid, the brake combo valve and EBCM. 1 wire goes to the forward discriminating sensor. The last wire goes to passenger discriminating sensor, and the DERM.

What is interesting is the EBCM will light the ABS INOP light and the TCS light and the DERM will light the AIR BAG light. Therefore even though you're wrong about the grounds termination points, it may still be the cause of the lights.

Certainly worth looking into. So you are both right. And get it scanned.

 

Speedygonzales,

Well stated.

 

Strange... when I went to the track Tuesday, this problem just disappeared. Everything is back to normal(with ABS, TCS, Airbag... My diagnostics still show some weird crap with my car).

 

I would say a ground on the pass side fender. I was messing around cleaning mine and forgot to hook one of mine up and my Air bag light went off. Its the only thing i could see throwing several lights off at once.