Originally Posted By: Tegger
Originally Posted By: GMBoy
just seeing the icon doesn't mean it should always light up.
I'm not too sure of that. It's been my experience that non-present features are not represented at all, except maybe as blank areas. My understanding is that this is done for legal reasons, and also so that owners and technicians will not mistake absent features for non-functional ones.
You sound like a Ford guy. A more typically Chrysler way of doing things would be:
Use the same cluster regardless of functional needs (but use different clusters for different interior colors or for special cars such as SRT) and flash program the cluster after installation so as to use or not use the ABS light. If this works out well as it should for five years, then at the next model year change all the clusters and the programming for non-ABS clusters so that instead of simply not illuminating the ABS light during bulb test it burns out the LED. This should also work well enough except there should be a special flaw in the programming such that if the gear select is in R during the bulb test the TCM will set a code and go into limp-in mode unless the radio is on, then none of this occurrs, but the radio will permanently stop working and must be replaced. Once this weird programming feature is discovered, issue a recall requiring replacement of the instrument cluster with a new unit of the original design that has a program that simply doesn't light up the ABS light on non-ABS vehicles but with a different color and font on the gauge faces. The recall should apply to all vehicles regardless of whether or not they have ABS.
Originally Posted By: GMBoy
just seeing the icon doesn't mean it should always light up.
I'm not too sure of that. It's been my experience that non-present features are not represented at all, except maybe as blank areas. My understanding is that this is done for legal reasons, and also so that owners and technicians will not mistake absent features for non-functional ones.
You sound like a Ford guy. A more typically Chrysler way of doing things would be:
Use the same cluster regardless of functional needs (but use different clusters for different interior colors or for special cars such as SRT) and flash program the cluster after installation so as to use or not use the ABS light. If this works out well as it should for five years, then at the next model year change all the clusters and the programming for non-ABS clusters so that instead of simply not illuminating the ABS light during bulb test it burns out the LED. This should also work well enough except there should be a special flaw in the programming such that if the gear select is in R during the bulb test the TCM will set a code and go into limp-in mode unless the radio is on, then none of this occurrs, but the radio will permanently stop working and must be replaced. Once this weird programming feature is discovered, issue a recall requiring replacement of the instrument cluster with a new unit of the original design that has a program that simply doesn't light up the ABS light on non-ABS vehicles but with a different color and font on the gauge faces. The recall should apply to all vehicles regardless of whether or not they have ABS.
