V35 Electrical Gremlins

[Spoddy]

Hi All,

I recently purchased a V35 with a few electrical issues:

1. The indicator lights in the cluster sometimes dont work - I found that tapping on the top of the cluster when they're not working usually gets them to turn on. clearly an intermittent connection somewhere.

2. The up and down shift "buttons" dont do anything. (by buttons I mean pushing the gearstick over to the left then briefly forward or backward).

3. The fuel gauge is stuck at full. could be the sender.

4. The boot light doesn't work with a new bulb. Where is the switch BTW?

If anyone has any experience with the above I'd love to hear what you found. However what I'd really like is a wiring diagram. Can anyone direct me to where one might be found?

David

 

[Vee37]

I used to have a V35. In regards to item 3. Fuel gauge issues are very common, and for me, it worked, it failed, I had the sender cleaned,  it worked, it failed again, I gave up. most people I have read about have the issue where it never show's as being totally filled up or always sits in the red when there are lots of K's left of fuel. But maybe the dirty sender has yours stuck in the up position at the sender. Long story short, fuel gauge issues are common and almost expected. 

The next electrical issue you should expect are the electrical window winders failing. For this one, I cleaned my old ones out & lubricated appropriately using electrically conductive grease, and they worked perfectly & reliably from that point on.

[GTSBoy]

2 hours ago, Spoddy said:

1. The indicator lights in the cluster sometimes dont work - I found that tapping on the top of the cluster when they're not working usually gets them to turn on. clearly an intermittent connection somewhere.

Take the cluster out and look at the globes where they are bayoneted into the instrument panel. Could be loose/dirty or the globes could have broken filaments that sometimes touch and provide a circuit and sometimes just hang with an airgap.

[sonicii]

You can get the G35 FSM here, it is generally close enough for most things -

https://www.nicoclub.com/infiniti-service-manuals

What year?  the cluster changed from incandescent bulbs to LEDs in 2005. but even then, you can still have bad connections that cause issues, I had a dry joint on a surface mount transistor on my 2005 that caused the odo backlights to go out occasionally.

Fuel gauge issues seem to be common too, mine sometimes reads high, then returns to normal for a while, then reads high again, I have never worked it out, I've removed, cleaned and tested both senders, check for bad connections, yet it still occurs

Sorry I don't have any solid solutions, but hopefully the FSM is useful.

 

[Spoddy]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Last night I took out the back seat and disconnected the electrical harnesses on both sides - didn't make any difference to the fuel gauge, it went straight to full when I turned on the ignition. Unless it averages the value over time (hence takes a while to drop) this would seem to rule out the sender.

Will remove the cluster on the weekend.

 

[sonicii]

Once you unplug either of the 2 connectors on the fuel tank, the gauge should fall to zero.  Since yours does not, you either have a short in your wiring harness somewhere between the tank connectors and the cluster.  or the cluster itself is faulty.

There is a test procedure in the FSM you can run on the cluster which should cause the fuel gauge to show half, regardless of what the signal from the sender is, this should help isolated the fault to the cluster or the wiring.

[Spoddy]

14 hours ago, sonicii said:

There is a test procedure in the FSM you can run on the cluster which should cause the fuel gauge to show half, regardless of what the signal from the sender is, this should help isolated the fault to the cluster or the wiring.

good to know, I'll look it up, thanks.

[Spoddy]

15 hours ago, sonicii said:

There is a test procedure in the FSM you can run on the cluster which should cause the fuel gauge to show half, regardless of what the signal from the sender is, this should help isolated the fault to the cluster or the wiring.

I tried running the test - the fuel gauge meter comes up to about half way, points to a wiring issue.

[sonicii]

That would be my guess, now the hard part is finding it..

[Blakeo]

Least your wiring harness hasn't caught on fire yet like mine.

[Spoddy]

For the benefit of people searching for solutions in the future, I found the following:

1. The problem with the indicator mimic lights in the cluster was caused by a dry joint on the cluster PCB. I traced the indicator LEDs to a common SMD resistor - the soldering looked OK but when I thought I'd resolder it anyway, since I'd come so far. As I pushed on one end with the soldering iron tip to apply heat, the part moved - it was not soldered well on the other end.  Having found one fault I went over the rest of the large resistors on the PCB and found quite a few like this.

2. The up and down shift "buttons" started working after the fault codes were cleared - the check engine light was on. I'd say the functionality is inhibited whenever the check engine light is on as a means to give you incentive to get the car fixed. The check engine light problem is I think due to a faulty brake vac sensor. 

FYI

I have yet to figure out the fuel gauge or boot light issues.

 

David

 

[Spoddy]

Again for the benefit of future searches, cleaning the fuel sender on the passenger side (I followed a video on YouTube) seems to have sorted out the fuel gauge issue.

David