The other night my 99 3.8 liter was broken into. The factory alarm went off, while the guy was in the car I used my fob to shut the alarm off. He saw me from the window and left. Once I went out to check the car I found he rifled through my center console and glove box. It looks like he got in by pulling the driver side window and somehow opening the door.

The problem is two things: The interior lighting will only go out when it times out 10 minutes. I thought he may have set the instrument panel dimmer to full detent to manually force the lights on ( I can roll that switch back and forth and nothing changes. What lights up is the rearview mirror lights and dome light. No mater what I do, start the car, open and close a door, the lights stay on 10 min. And finally times out. The second problem is my speedometer arm is flipped around, not on the 0 side, but it sits full clockwise pointing straight down.
Any thoughts? I unhooked the battery and reconnected it again with the same problems.
Your thoughts and idea's would be appreciated.

 

The interior lighting you describe is controlled by the Body Control Module. The fact that the lights time out leads me to believe the problem there. It supplies both the power supply and ground in the normal operation. I believe the 12V power supply is hot when the key is in the run position and the ground is provided by either the BCM or the switches on the mirror. If the ground was from the switches on the mirror, the time out function wouldn't occur and lights wouldn't shut off until the switch was turned off. Not sure how this was effected from your break in unless the wiring was tampered with, so check there first. I'm not familiar enough with the speedometer operation to understand what could cause this situation.

 

Thank you for your time on the subject. I'll look into the BCM and dig around further looking into any wiring issue. I just don't see anything openly disturbed. The sad part is I just got the car up and running after having it down a couple of years. Thanks again.

 

look under the dash by where your feet go and see if it looks like someone has been digging around down there in the wiring. guy may have tried to rip out wires to stop the alarm. best to pull the cover to get a good look.

 

Certainly a good possibility. Thanks

 

This is pretty crazy but here's what happened. Three days without me doing anything but looking around for a wiring issue, I got in the car this evening and the interior light dimmed down as it should, and then 10 min. Into my drive the speedometer went back to business as usual. Thank the Lord I didn't have to tear into anything. P.S. after the ball game, everything continued to work properly. Again, thanks for the insight!