Ugh, embarrasing. I hadn't driven the convertible in a while (winter weather and all) and found the battery to be dead this afternoon. I backed up the 318is to give a jump. I was in a hurry and managed to get the cables switched when hooking up the 318is battery. I noticed something was wrong when the convertible had no help starting, and then saw smoke coming from the cable's rubber handles. I quickly disconnected the cables and let everything cool down. I re-tried an hour later, and everything went fine. Except now the convertible is giving me an orange Anti Lock warning on the dash. I've never had this before. Related? Thanks for your input.
Yes, definitely related. Don't touch anything yet! Messing around with stuff improperly can fry your harness. Do a search as someone just went through all this recently.
Perhaps you fried the ABS control unit? I suspect that's what happened to mine from the previous owner's adventures...
There is an overvoltage protection device in a relay, but if you don't identify the correct one and just start swapping crap out because you think it looks the same, you will have to replace the entire wiring harness. Just read this: http://bmwcca.org/forum/showthread.php?t=4164
Thank you for the replies, and the link. Hopefully I just fried the ABS relay, Lord knows I do not want to replace the whole wiring harness. Wow. So far I've seen no other symptoms of a problem, car runs perfectly normal, just with that warning light. Even if a new ABS relay makes the warning light go away, now I'm a bit nervous about the overall health of the electrical system. Visions of wiring catching fire and me exploding. Are there specific areas I should check for damage? I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to electrical.
I think it will be fine. That guy accidentally fried his harness by installing the wrong relay. I was just pointing out that you should be careful if you are not sure what you are doing. I believe that the ABS relay will fix that problem.
Hey Paul, hopefully my oops can help someone else. Glad you put up the link. P.S. No problems so far with my little rewire. (nock on wood)
You should take a pic and point out which relay has the overvoltage fuse in it so he knows what to replace as well as the PN if you still have it.
That would be great if it's not too much trouble. Having a better idea what I'm looking at/for would be a big help. I'll be diving in this weekend. Thanks for all the help.
