2000 Sonata Dash Lights

I have a 2000 Sonata and the dash illumination lights don't work. I'll
pulled out most of the dash trying to trace the problem but no luck.
All fuses are good but I don't show any power at the rheostat. The
funning thing is that the ashtray light does work.

I'm not sure if it's related but a few days before we noticed the dash
lights out, we heard a clicking from under the dash, from the tail lamp
relay I guess. Every time there was a click, the parking lights
flashed. I turned on the lights and it stopped. It was a few days
before I drove after dark to notice the dash lights

One other thing, most diagrams show differences for with or without
DRL. I could have sworn that I did have them but they don't seem to be
working now.

BTW I haven't installed anything except a remote starter 2 years ago
and I've got all the diagrams and instructions from
http://www.hmaservice.com/webtech/default.asp.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Stuart

 

1. Is your remote starter in combination with keyless entry or do you have
keyless entry? If so, that's likely the cause of the flashing lamps.
You'll want to check the keyless and the wiring to be sure the splices are
good and it's not shorted to ground.

2. Do all your exterior lamps work? If your parking lamps are out on one
side of the vehicle, check the fuses in the fuse box under the hood. The
interior lamps are on the same circuit as one side's parking lamps. There
should be two parking lamp (tail lamp) fuses-- one for each side of the
vehicle.

3. If your car was meant for sale in the U.S., you don't have DRL.

 

Thanks, I appreciate the reply.

1.The remote starter is in combination with the keyless entry.
Everything still looks good but I guess I'll have to give the joins a
closer look. The flashing only happened that one time and the remote
starter and remote entry still work.

2.All exterior lamps are working and fuses look good.

3. The car was sold originally in Canada and I found my DRL control
module after I wrote my earlier post. I did manage to get a power
reading on some of the wires. My DRL's are still not working.

In my first post I mentioned that the ashtray illumination was working,
I went back to confirm that after I went through the circuit and now I
don't get any power. I thought that by having power there it meant that
the circuit was at least good coming from JM01 12. Now it looks like my
problem is further back. The fact that it was working has me looking
for a bad connection.

There is power at the DRL fuse in the engine compartment which goes to
JM09 B8 and the through the DRL control module before coming back to
the fuse panel inside the car. I think this is what I need to confirm
next.

 

Your interior illumination rheostat should have three wires-- one power,
one ground, and one output. I've seen several rheostats fail.

I'm also not familiar with how the DRL operates. All Canadian vehicles
have it. I suppose it's possible that the DRL could also control the dash
lamps, but I don't see why it would.

 

We had an Elantra in today (originally for sale in another country) with
DRL. The DRL seemed to have no effect on the dash illumination.

 

Thanks for the update. I've done a fair amount of reading and testing
and here is what I've come up with.

The power for the DRL comes from the battery, through the DRL fuse in
the engine compartment junction block, out through the bottom of the
block through JE01 A1, along a 0.85 Red/White wire to the DRL control
module. From there it leaves the DRL module on a 0.5 brown/white wire
and goes to the illuminations. This can all be seen under the Daytime
running lights schematics at:
http://www.hmaservice.com/webtech/iindex.asp?id=394881664#_394881664

I've tested the R/W wire and I don't get any power but I've tested both
sides of the DRL fuse and I do get a power reading. I also do not get a
continuity reading from the fuse to the R/W wire at the DRL module.
This leads me to belive that the problem is a break in the R/W wire.

I tried to get under the engine compartment fuse box by taking out the
battery and the bolts but it proved more difficult than I thought. Any
suggestions on how to do this?

My next step is to try and bypass the existing wire by splicing in a
new wire going into the DRL module and temporarily removing the fuse
and touching the wire off the hot side of the fuse socket. If this
works I'll
have to get under the fuse box a probably run a new wire.

 

Nice job. You'll probably have to wrangle with the underhood fuse box a
little. You definitely want to check there. Problems in the junction box
are frequent enought that you'll want to check to see whether you've power
coming out of the box. I believe I recall seeing one with a burned
connector from a poor connection.

 

Problems Solved!!

I did what I said in my last post. I temporarily spliced a wire into
the wire going into the DRL and then removed the DRL fuse and stuck the
wire into the hot side of the the socket. It worked. My daytime
running lights came on and my dash lights worked.

To permanently fix the problem I had to get under the junction box
which proved to be a little difficult. Once I removed the battery and
the power connection to the box I was able to wrangle the box around
enough to remove the bottom half which is just clipped on. The
connection to the box was still good so it looks like there was a break
in the wire somewhere. It wasn't obvious where so I ended up cutting
the problem wire and splicing in a new one at both ends. I just ran the
new wire along side of the wire bundle casing so I may have to re-run
it a bit more securely in the future.

Thanks for your responses. I hope some else can benefit from my misery
in the future.