Lights out when using a new tomtom!

[Martec]

Hi,

We set off for our usual café for lunch, a test drive of about 60 or so miles, as I had plugged in the new Tomtom to the cigarette lighter, all the lights went out on the dash, heater temperatures and the radio, plus the milometer. As everything else was OK we carried on (handbrake on alarm worked), unplugging the TT didn't clear the fault.

After lunch, very nice, without the TT plugged in all the test alarms came up and cleared and all seemed well as full illumination was restored, but within a minute it went out again. About 15 minutes later it all came back on again and has stayed on!!! I'll try it again tonight in the garage to see what goes out with TT plugged in again?

I remember reading recently of someone having a similar problem, on here I think where their son or grandson had plugged in his play station........thingy and he lost instrumentation. I can't find it now can anyone shed light on this please.

On another subject whilst MOT ing another of our old cars I asked about clearing codes by disconnecting the battery for 20 minutes or so, why did it work on some cars but apparently not all. I was told that the early ECU's and early OBDII systems could be cleared by disconnection, but later systems required connection to the makers system for the codes to be cleared (that explains David Marks comment at the seminar).

A friend had to drive a police Volvo across the river to a Hull Volvo agent in 'limp home mode' to clear the code, even though the fault had been rectified at the local police garage!!!

Is it me or are we being hung out to dry? Any idea at what year Jaguar implemented this system?

Brian

PS the car is permanently connected to a trickle charger in the garage and the battery was pronounced fit 5 months ago.

[J44EAG]

I can`t explain the loss of illumination with the TT, Brian, as my 02 plate car which uses the same OBD11 system as your car has given me no trouble at all when I`ve plugged my TT into the lighter socket.

Regarding the change over to the later system, I think this was from the pre face lift model entry from Vin no M45xxx ? onwards. ie the interim model before the complete and last model revision.

From experience, my cheap and cheerful double disc pc based diagnostic program, will talk to my early model car but not to an early pre face lift car on a 52 plate. I recall that car was Vin numbered at around M66??? To clear fault codes on the later car I became involved with, I had to hard dump fault codes by battery disconnection due to the refusal of my diagnostic program wanting anything to do with the later car.

That is the best I can do.

Mike

[Martec]

Do I feel a fool or do I feel a fool, I went out last night to the garage in the dark and everything was working fine, lights on TT on, went for drive and all OK, so decided to fiddle and found the switch on the wiper arm to adjust the time delay for intermittent wipe.

So what had I been adjusting on the dash beside the steering wheel..............dash light dimmer!!!!

So I must have caught it when attaching the TT to the windscreen and after lunch adjusted the wiper delay and the dash lights all worked again!!

Yes you can't call me any worse names than I've called myself, I'm reasonably certain that was the 'problem'.

Brian