Hello guys,

I wondered if this weird malfunction has happened to one of you before, I have a 2000 S-type Sport without navigation system (don't even know if it was available on first year in North America), and a few days ago, all three displays on the dash cluster, the radio and the heater stopped working at the same time while I was driving (worked fine when I left home). The malfunction doesn't seem to come from the displays or the units themselves, as the cluster still can tell "DSC system OFF" when I press the button, just doesn't show the kilometers in normal driving, and the radio still displays the clock when I turn the car off for a few seconds. It looks a lot to me like a synchronization/communication/software problem and I wonder how this could happen. It makes me think that when I bought the car I noticed that the DSC system wouldn't work (yellow wheel flashing at all times) and it seems like the car has sat too long with the battery dead and it erased the DSC mapping...odd...

 

Well, it looks like I was too impatient to wait for help! I did two hard resets with negative battery post jumped to the positive one, first time for just over 30 seconds, without any change except losing radio memory, and the second time I let the car sit as is for several hours. When I connected everything back, the displays still didn't work after starting the engine, but did for a short amount of time (less than 1 second) at startup. Then I noticed there were some very dark characters on the radio and that I was able to read them if I'd use my hand to make shadow. I said to myself "dang, that's so dim... like in dimmer..." And sure enough I played with the dimmer potentiometer a few times and all displays were back, so it must have had a dirty spot and the dust came loose when I tinkered with it. This is the kind if stuff that happens in Kanadistan when one day it's 10 Celsius with wind and rain and the next day it's -10 Celsius with the same rain first turned in sticky snow, then into powder... What's odd is that the three displays were the only devices that were dimmed, all the rest of the dash was still illuminated...

 

Ah, you beat me to it. Just got home from Second Breakfast and played with the dimmer switch on the drive back.

With the headlights off, the dimmer switch seems to be inhibited. The lighting system probably assumes it is daytime if the lights are off, and those displays go full bright automatically. Turn on the headlights and now the dimmer switch is active.

I rarely touch the dimmer switch. Seemed kinda finicky to me. It would jump from full bright to full dim, with not much in between.

 

Absolutely, what you say about the relation between the headlight status and the display's brightness makes a lot of sense, and the thing is my headlight switch is on "auto" at all times because so far it just works and I don't ever touch the dimmer either. So when I start the car, with the dimmer at full dark, it takes like half a second before the lights kick in and the displays get dimmed.