Can You Help Out On A 2003 Impreza

[tralfaz_no1]

Hi. This is my first post to this forum so if I make any mistakes please feel free to point out where I have gone wrong.

To 'fess up straight away I don't own a Subaru and my reason for joining the forum is that at age 61 and retired I am trying to help some young friends of mine (guy 20 that we have helped since his family broke up at age 15, and his lady 19) who have had a hard time in Brisbane recently. All they basically have between them now is their pride and joy, a 2003 blue Subaru Impreza which didn't go under in the floods.

The car is very well looked after but it has developed a strange problem with the interior lights, specifically the roof light and the key light on the steering column. I have a well equipped workshop so they have been hanging out in my garage during the past week with me trying to work out how to fix the problem.

The problem is that the roof light and the key light wont illuminate all through the normal procedure of locking/unlocking and opening/closing the doors. I have downloaded wiring diagrams and gone through the fuses, etc; with a fine tooth comb and a multimeter but nothing seems to be wrong.

We stripped the panel below the steering wheel off and checked all the hidden fuses, all are OK. There is power on one side of the wiring going to the key light but not on the other side of the light (I have assumed that this is because there is a circuit that provides current to switch the light off after the 15 second delay post entry and shutting the doors).

Having gone through everything this is a very strange problem which I hope someone on the forum might have had some experience with.

My thoughts are that it could be a faulty key module shown on one of the wiring diagrams, or that there could be a relay not installed somewhere (there seems to be a spot with connectors but no relay on the left side of the in-car fusebox), or it could be when the previous owner put the big stereo in they did something behind the dash that has screwed this up.

Apologies in advance that this is so long but I wanted to introduce myself plsu the explain the problem as best as I could.

Whatever forum members can come up with would be really helpful. The owners are now not well off at all and this would help me to get some morale back.