Fiat 500 ‘spanner’ dash light

[Lordbenny]

I’m about to have a look at a private sale 2015 Fiat 500. It’s immaculate and has FSH. The young lady selling says she had it recently serviced but the spanner light is on in the dash.

Would this be a worry, can I turn it off?

[Rikki55]

If it were me, I'd take an OBD code reader with me to plug in and see what the code is, make sure its nothing too sinister! (Cheapy £20 jobby from Euros will do the job!)

[deggles]

Lordbenny said:

I’m about to have a look at a private sale 2015 Fiat 500. It’s immaculate and has FSH. The young lady selling says she had it recently serviced but the spanner light is on in the dash.

Would this be a worry, can I turn it off?

Not hard to turn the light off with a laptop or code reader but I'd be checking for evidence/paperwork to see if it has actually been serviced properly. Might be a simple oversight but it should be routine for any decent garage to reset the service indicator.

I can't fathom why you'd try and sell a car with the service light on if you've just paid for a service.

[Lordbenny]

deggles said:

Not hard to turn the light off with a laptop or code reader but I'd be checking for evidence/paperwork to see if it has actually been serviced properly. Might be a simple oversight but it should be routine for any decent garage to reset the service indicator.

I can't fathom why you'd try and sell a car with the service light on if you've just paid for a service.

They really are legit sellers….I usually can tell!….the girl selling is very well spoken, from Weybridge. The cars ad photos were outside a very nice house. She’s on holiday at the moment so cars at her brother’s in Brighton. He sounds like a nice fella and say he has all the corresponding paperwork.

£6500….possibly a little less! What do you think?

[deggles]

Looks tidy. If everything else checks out the service light itself wouldn't bother me. Invoice for work done (not just a stamp) is the best evidence of service history. I'd normally be wary of buying from a 'relative' from an address different to the V5, but like you say you can usually get a feel if people are genuine

[Lordbenny]

Bought the car…..we love it.

Been looking on line about the ‘turn on ignition, pump accelerator three times’ service light reset but it doesn’t work…

Any other ideas apart from doing it with a obd meter?

[Lordbenny]

So, the horn on the car didn’t work properly, it makes a very quiet, dull honk.

Today I went under the car and made sure all the horn connections were tight and zip tied all the wires up properly. Pressed the horn and….a lovely loud beep just as it should be.

Next time I started the car….the spanner light has gone! So, does this mean the spanner comes on if you have a problem other than just a service interval?