Hey guys okay, so everything’s been fine with my dash but tonight I go to turn my lights on and you know how it transfers from the normal dash to when you turn the lights on and the numbers and everything lights up well it just stayed the normal dash... not sure what that could be and really hoping I don’t need a new dash help

 

Do the gauges dim when you turn on the lights? If not, turn headlights on and go look at your tail lights. If the fuse for the tail light relay is blown, then the dimmer circuit and small dash lights (button lights) will not work. The output of the tail light relay powers the tail lights, but also powers the other dash lights and is the signal to the ECU that triggers the dimmer circuit.

If the tail lights are not coming on, then go look for fuse 23 (10A) in the under dash fuse panel.

 

^

 

I should have mentioned, if that fuse is blown and it blows again, then the first quick thing to check before looking for pinched wires is a blown tail light bulb. This style of bulb does have an occassional tendancy to blow the filimant, but the two legs it attaches to can vibrate and touch once in a while, causing a short that you will chase through the wiring harness only to find it was just the bad bulb to start with ..... ask me how I know this lol The filament is the the part of the bulb contact with any real resistance to speak of that prevents the fuse from blowing.

But if it is not a bulb and the fuse keeps blowing, I can tell you some steps and places to start with a meter to start eliminating potential sources of the short to make it easier to find. Mine blew twice in a 3 week period and I went through this exercise because I did not look for the simple thing first :P Normally we automatically think of a blown bulb as an open circuit, but that is not always the case. One of the legs that hold the filament in mine was leaning over about 1mm away from the other one, thus causing an intermittent short. Luckilly on the send time it stayed in that position and I was able to see the short long enough to find it. I was sure it was wiring up until then due to the trunk being loaded down with my autox stuff both times it happened ... but that is why you still always start at the simple things to check first!!

 

okay so now my dash lights are stuck on without my taillights on but my headlights are. And I can’t switch from the dash lights being on to off

 

So, are you saying the dash lights do not turn off when you turn off the headlights? They are always on when the key is on regardless of headlight switch position? And are the gauge lights themselves dimmed or on full bright?

 

even when My headlights are off the dash is lit up as if the headlights were on and the brightness is all the way up I tried turning it down it does work but it only dims it

 

Ok so just to be sure, the gauges should be at full bright (unless you dim them) when the headlights are off. The dash buttons should NOT be lit up when the headlights are off. When you turn on the headlights, the gauges should automatically dim and the rest of the dash/button lights should come on.

So, your dash button lights (AC controls, etc) are lit up even with the headlights off?

And

If you turn the headlights on, the gauges do not dim at all?

 

This was intuitively confusing to me at first. On a group drive with several cars we turned our headlights on -- and I couldn't read the instruments in daylight! The others helped me figure it out. Seems like this is happening here as well.

-- Chuck

 

If you press and hold the + button on the dimmer buttons for a couple of seconds after turning on headlights, the gagues will go back into "day" mode so they are easier to see in those instances where you want the headlights on but it is still light outside