I started my car, heard a light popping noise and now all my dashboard lights are on and none of the gauges are working, speedometer, gas gauge, tachometer...

It's a 2001 SL2 with over 130K miles on it, anyone have any insight as to what might be causing this issue?

 

please define "all dashboard lights."
All the lights that light up the dash at night?
All the indicator lights(if so, exactly which ones (service engine soon, brake, oil?


Did the car stop running? Is it running now and is it running normally?


Where (physically) did it sound like the popping came from. Center console? Behind the dash? Under the hood?


After you answer, I'm moving the thread to the s series sedan section where it belongs

 

All the panel lights, no other way to describe it, every light on the dashboard panel, warning lights, indicator lights, everything...

The car ran just fine, as far as I could tell, I drove it home with no incident, not sure where the popping sound came from, it was in front of me and low, so it could have been under the hood.

I forgot to mention it was snowing and well below freezing at the time too...

 

Strangely enough, this morning everything appears to be normal, the indicator lights and the gauges are working as I would expect them to be... and the temperature is higher now too, could that be a contributing factor?

 

post moved to S series sedan

 

The location of the pop and the incident may be related and may not.
The BCM (Body Control Module) is located in that general area. It controls pretty much all non-engine related functions.


The dashboard doing a "Christmas tree" is usually the sign of dearth for a BCM. The fact that yours works again is surprising but maybe not necessarily so surprising.


Does your odometer read correctly?


I'm thinking you hit a pothole hard, or a piece of junk hit the underside of the frame right in front of your feet, This may have dislodged the BCM's connector just enough to cause the chaos on the dash. Normal road driving afterwards may have knocked it back in place. With a car that old, tiny movements of connectors like that can be significant because the contacts oxidize over time, and shifting of the male or female parts may lead to a pin contacting an oxidized portion of the female socket and not making electrical contact.


An alternate explanation is that it was an electrical POP of a component inside the BCM failing (usually capacitors make that sound when they literally pop open.) This caused the Christmas tree effect; however the fact that it went back to "normal" afterwards is mystifying since exploded capacitors tend not to unexplode, and if it is important enough to the BCM to Christmas tree it, it should still be equally important.


So maybe the pop is unrelated to the BCM INTERNAL electrical behavior.


But my 2 cents is that this has to do with the BCM in some way.


If you want to investigate the BCM external connections, DISCONNECT THE BATTERY FIRST.


If your odometer is now totally off, you BCM is definitely going bad.

 

Now the car will not start and the odometer reads about 170 miles, which is more than 100K off, how can I tell if the BCM is the actual issue? And hope easy is it to change out one of those?

 

Mileage wackiness is always a symptom of BCM failure.
I highly doubt you will be able to start that car without replacing the BCM.
This is a pretty common issue w the L series cars. Don't know if they used the same exact module in the 3rd gen s series. I suppose you could look that up on gmpartswarehouse.com. .

You can post to saturnfans.com . they have some very experienced former Saturn techs that will tell you the same.

Should be able to find one in a junkyard after you determine which ones will interchange. Will need to be reprogrammed at a gm dealership.

 

Could this also be a alternator issue or is it probably just the BCM, I just replaced the battery and it would not start anyway...

 

Unless you had a short to ground rhrough rhe dkodes, from the alt.which immediately drained your battery to the degree that the engine won't cra k over.AND that was the case before replacing the battery, no.

If you can borrow a code scanner, read the codes and post as Pxxxx. Not sure if the bcm or pcm directly.interfaces with the OBDII port. Do this even if the service engine light is not on, as there may be "pending codes" that are stored. ( will read as Pxxxxp