Electrical issues!
 

Alright guys, story time.

I just got home from my nightly cruise around town (midnight), but this time it wasn't nearly as fun as it usually is. Mind you, I spent 8 hours in a defensive driving course today, and I just wanted to go out for a quiet (or as quiet as an FC can be) ride. Well, I made it about 3 miles down the road and I noticed the "delightfully unique" pattern of a new crown vic's headlights had begun to follow me. I thought, great, I just spent an entire day re-learning how to become a safe driver and now I was going to get a ticket, even though I wasn't speeding! Long story short, as I was turning into a nearby gas station he flipped on his lights and I stopped like a good boy. As it turns out, my rear lights were not on at all! He let me go with a warning, and told me to go home with my hazard lights on. After screwing around with fuses and wires for a bit, I realized that my front yellows were not on either, so I was only running on headlights and brakelights, not cool.

This all leads me to believe that my car has to have one of the largest concentrations of common FC electrical problems on the east coast. It has the "one speed wipers", dead rear wiper, busted moonroof, dead passenger's power window switch, occasionally functioning cruise control, a selectively operating alarm, a similarly occasional "lights-on or key's in" warning beeper, dead power antenna, more I can't even remember, and now apparently a semi-dead light switch.

Have any of you guys had problems with your lights failing like this? Is it the cluster mounted switch, or some kind of grounding problem? Thankfully I leave for college in a couple days, so I get a break from fixing this thing, the junkyards around here are really starting to like me.

Thanks!

I had that problem with my switch itself, sometimes my rear-lights would go out but my gauge lights were on, sometimes my gauge light went out and my headlights/rear lights were working. I'd try the switch first.

cool, my guage cluster lights flicker sometimes too, so I am hoping it is the switch.

Bad switch or harness to the switch.

Chances are the parking light wire is burnt in the harness where it plugs into the back of the switch.

Yup had the same issue. Pull the switch from the molex plug look for currosion or burnt terminals... If so... Clean it with a wire brush and jiggle it until it kicks back on (thats just a band-aid that works for me) if your smart youll leave 1 screw holding your cluster..... It easly will catch fire if you run it to long...
Gluck...

i have similar problems only difference being my gauges and brake lights blink on and off, and sound like my hazard lights going off... the problem fortantly goes away when i put on my headlights so i can get away with driving still but otherwise with the blinking brake lights i would be in serious trouble

Whrn all of those components start flipping out you have either a bad cpu (NOT ECU!!!) or light switch and harness both very simple fixes the clicking noise you here is probubly a relay gone bad in the cpu.