A friend disconnected the battery in my 1991 XJ6 Sovereign today by disconnecting the red, positive cable and not the black ground. After the red positive was re-attached, nothing on my instrument cluster works except a code in the center LCD appears. It has broken letters/numbers which could be ELE550 or FLE560. And I cannot clear the message.

Everything else works fine, except it does appear to idle a bit slower at stop signs than before the battery disconnect. But that could be my imagination since nothing in the instrument cluster works, including the tach.

 

The broken LCD readout indicates a spike of some description. I have disconnected my '92 3.2 battery on a number of occasions and replaced it once without a problem.
I will follow this thread with interest. Is it possible that you had the ignition on when the battery was disconnected/re-connected?

 

It isn't my car type but sounds like corruption due to a spike as direng suggests.
It would do no possible harm to disconnect ground, touch the ground lead to +ve for a minute and reconnect.

 

I do remember writing down the computer's Avg MPG/Gallons Used and odometer readings before the battery was disconnected. I'm unsure if the key was still in the "ACC" or "Off" position, or even if the key was in the ignition at all when the positive battery lead was disconnected.

Is there possibly a fuse or switch other than what I call Buzz fuses? The fuses in the left/right/center boxes have been checked. It is strange that I am able to read a message in the odometer read-out section, but can't clear or reset it. And of course, no other instruments/gauges/warning lights operate within the cluster except the dimmer back lights.

 

Do try a 'hard reset' as I described. It can do no harm and may well fix the problem.

 

Problem solved!!!!!!

I saw my mechanic today and he was stumped for several minutes. All the fuses were confirmed as working properly. He searched Hayes as I did for a possible reset switch that may be behind the instrument cluster. Some XJ6s have such a reset and the Hayes photo of the back of the console showed possible reset pins, but nothing confirming that is what the holes were for. And no specific remedy was offered.

The solution that worked was to disconnect the negative battery cable for over 10 minutes to clear/purge all system memory and have it reset itself. Any less than 10 minutes may have been fruitless per my mechanic. I had only attempted a disconnect for 2 minutes earlier, and my original positive cable reattachment probably arced or spiked the some electrical functions, namely the entire instrument cluster and nothing else.

 

That's good to hear, thanks for the update. I've had that problem also, once after a jump start and another after a bettery discconnect, always straightened out after another proper disconnect of the -tive cable.

Charlie

 

I am having the same problem on my 1989 Vandan Plas. I got into the car one day and the instrument cluster would not show any of the gauges. The VCM only shows dot matrixs. Good Luck. I am stumped. Did a hard reset but it did not help.