Technical Trim/Running lights stay on when car is off/locked

[CS Brass Knight]

I borrowed my girlfriend's Fiat 500X tonight for a short errand. (USA)


Has this weirdness described below happened to anyone?

Arrived at my destination with no problems.
When I was leaving, I opened the driver's door and randomly pressed all the buttons (mirror adjust, windows, window lock, lock, unlock) on the door trying to unlock the rear doors.

I definitely hit the lock button at one point, and a few seconds later the horn honked. I pressed unlock and grabbed and pulled the door handle to unlock the doors again.
I drove back to her apartment with no problems.

I left her Fiat running for a few minutes while I got thing out of the back seat, then I parked the car, turned it off, got out, and locked the doors.

As I walked away, I realized that the brake/rear lights, the mirror lights, and maybe the front yellow lights were all still on. It looked like the parking/trim lights were still turned on. The only message on the dash is one about low tire/tyre pressure.

We tried several things: power on/off; engine on/off; lock/unlock doors; turn off and on headlights; open/close doors; drive the car for a few minutes. None of these helped, the lights were still on!

Finally, I disconnected the battery for about 60 seconds, and when reconnected, the lights behaved correctly when the doors were locked.

Has anyone experienced something like this?
Is this just a glitchy computer? She has had electrical weirdness with this car.

 

[Ralf S.]

The car may have "follow me home" lights, whereby if you turn the ignition off, and then operate the high beam "passing light" e.g. by pulling back the spring loaded headlamp stalk, it turns the front lights on for 10 seconds, for every "pull" on the stalk... so three pulls = 30 seconds. I think the maximum is 30s.

That keeps the front lights on for 10, 20, 30 etc. seconds, even after you've locked the car, so that you can walk up your drive and get into the house before the lights turn themselves off again automatically.

It could be that the "follow me home" operates all the lights you described... but I *think* (?) it should just be the headlamps.. It's an easy one to test though... go out there, turn the engine on, switch it off, then pull the headlamp stalk and see what the lights do. If you have FMH, you might see a message ("10s", "20s" etc.) on the LCD display.. but I'm not familiar with the 500X system.

If you don't have FMH or activating it just lights up the headlamps and not the whole car.. then your incident was probably a glitch of some sort. Usually earthing problems cause the most bizarre symptoms, so check the earthing straps from the battery to the body and any that run from the ECU to the inner wings etc. It'll be something simple hopefully.

I don't know if the 500X suffers from broken tailgate wiring (where the wires pass from the car into the boot, they can break through constant bending backwards and forwards) but it seems to affect every hatchback ever built... so you can also have a peep under the rubber gaitor for any wires that look "bent" or broken.


Ralf S.