thafox

ok...i was doin somethin stupid, i found these 2 wire's under my shifter boot while i was lettin the car warm up at night, it looked like they plugged into each other (male an female butt end's) so i just touch 'em 2gether an notice my gauge cluster light's an light for glovebox an ashtray turn off when i connect 'em (yea curiousity killed the cat at this point) so im like cool an keep messin with it after like 3 time's the light's dont work ne more...i checked the fuse's under the driver's side dash, and the fuseble link's under the hood, and thier all fine, but before i rip apart the gauge cluster and check the bulb's i just wanted 2 ask if there was ne other place there might be fuse's or where i might b over lookin to solve this problem....btw all the other light's work except for the gauge cluster, glove box, and ashtray

Felgar

Well if the heater and fan dials light up then it's not the dimmer switch which is prone to failure. AFAIK that may be the only other point of failure in that system.

If I were you I'd pull the center cover off because I think the heat and fan dials have the same light as the ashtray. You can verify with them whether the ashtray's burned out or not. At least that way you won't have to pull the instrument panel unless you have to.

thafox

yea i know it's not the dimmer because the light's in the car still dim down when i turn the outside light's on, but could u explain a lil more on what u mean by takin off the stereo surround to check the light's back there? an what is AFAIK?

r0taryluv

Might be a stupid question but you did pull that plug back apart right? It still sounds like it is the dimmer switch, by putting those two plugs together you have burnt the dimmer switch. My suggestion rather than tearing your dash apart to find out the cluster bulbs hard ever burn out woulb be to go to a juck yard and grab another dimmer switch to assure that this isnt the problem. You say that all the other lights dim down when you turn the headlights on, well ofcourse they will you are drawing more current. I did the same thing as you did 3 years ago messing around and could not for the life of me figure it out. I traced wires, I pull the dash cluster, used and ohm meter. And come to find out it was the dimmer switch.

good luck.

thafox

yea i did disconnect the wire's i was messin with, the dimmer switch then, i'll check that out then...thnx for the reply's guy's i appriciate it

Felgar

If you pull the base of the shifter boot up and off, there are two screws to undo that will enable you to remove the plastic that goes around the stereo and the heat controls. Before you remove the surround you'll also have to pull the heat and fan ***** off, they pull straight off.

The two ***** are also lit from the back, and I'm asuming that they're working for you. They will dim/brighten too with the dimmer switch so you can verify the switch just with those 2 light. I'm suggesting that you can verify the ashtray light by connecting to one of those 2 **** lights. If it's burnt out (and wasn't before) then you can probably safely conclude that burnt out lights are the problem.

AFAIK - as far as I know.

red13brx7

Yep, that is common, that always happens when you plug those together. I spent many months trying to figre out what happened to mine, I figured that i pluged them together, they have something to do with the auto tranny, when you plug them together you blow your gauge lights. I never got mine fixed, I just bought glow gauges, because it was the easiest way to fix it at the time.

sweetege

yea mine do'nt work either oops have'nt for like 2 months. hehe i gotta get that fixed