Thread: Blinker stayed on continuously

Hi everyone, ever since buying my Rangie it's had an occasional "bulb fault" message come up, when I used the left indicator. About once a week - didn't worry me much. A beep, message and fast clicking. I wrongly assumed it was just a faulty bulb or a bit of water/dirt in the socket.

Then the other week I locked the car and walked away, and noticed the left hand front indicator, glowing continuously. Hazards button didn't affect it, and all the other turn signals were fine. The only way to turn it off, was to remove the bulb! So I did that, to avoid draining the battery.

So it was off to the auto electrician, who (as I suspected, thanks to other indicator posts here) diagnosed a fault in a transistor in the BeCM unit, after taking out the driver's seat.

Initially they offered to put in a relay around the issue, but said this would have still produced the fault message, as the unit would not be reporting back that "all is well". I was tempted by the simplicity of that solution, but would rather the blinkers not do the fast-clicking thing.. They eventually found a replacement transistor (from overseas, couldn't find one from this "old generation" locally?).

The part was cheap, but the labour cost was high - then when I went to pick up the car, one of the rear windows now wouldn't operate. So they went back to work on the board, telling me it could have dry joints in the solder, that had been disturbed by them removing the board for the initial work on the blinker module. I said they mustn't have checked that everything handled by the board was working, before calling me to pick up.

After some more days the car was ready, and everything is now working well. They wanted to charge me for the extra time, but I pushed back. I think they've re-soldered much of the board, as the Rangie previously had an alarm fault every time I put the key in.. but now it super-locks, whereas before it wouldn't do more than the basic lock. Also, the aircon was a bit hit-and-miss, but is now largely behaving itself.

Anyway, it was an expensive blinker!

Originally Posted by Drano

Yes, I should give credit where it's due - it was Mark from Bashi's Auto Electrics at Caboolture.
I think he said he owns an old-ish BMW, so knows about how BeCM parts can play up.

Mate,

It's good to know there is at least one other person in OZ who is prepared to dig into our BECM's

Steve