Hey, everyone.
I recently got a black '98 318ti w/ Sport package from a local independent dealer. One previous owner, ~82,000mi and in pretty good shape, all things considered.
I already drew up a laundry list of (hopefully) little things that need fixing. Among them, the SRS indicator. The darn thing refuses to light up like it's supposed to when starting the engine.
One of the things in the laundry list is to replace all the bulbs in the instrument cluster. My initial thought was, "Great, hopefully the fix for the SRS light will be as simple as replacing a burn-out bulb." I followed previous DIY postings on how to replace the cluster bulbs (thanks fellas, you might just save me $100). To my surprise, I found that the SRS bulb was not only burnt-out, but it POPPED (as in burst into pieces). How could that be?
Before this little discovery, I took the vehicle to the mechanic last week for a general inspection. The SRS issue was one of the things brought to his attention. I was later told that they couldn't perform a basic check of the SRS, perhaps because someone had taken out the bulb as a cheap fix for something, or because of some larger underlying problem, which they could not diagnose without use of their fancier toy$.
I'm pretty freaked now that I found this broken bulb.
Is the problem isolated to the instrument cluster alone? Did the SRS fry, causing the bulb to burst? I'll be the first to admit that I don't know sh~t from chinola when it comes to fixing cars (but I hope to someday).
I'll appreciate any insight any of you might have regarding this.
TIA