No dashboard lites @ night

[rchesnav]

Hi,

New to the forum. Have a Black 99 for almost 2 years, and what a great car! Have never seen a car with as much electronics/electrical stuff. We use the twilight sensor all the time to turn on the lights, and recently when it kicks into nighttime mode, the dash lights, computer readout, temp display and climate control switch settings go out. During the daylight hours all the displays that should work do. Figure it's tied in to the twilight circuit somewhere, but what do I check?

Thanks in advance, Bob

[TheLoveThatNeverDies]

Welcome to the board Bob. I'm fairly new here too, but it's been a great experience so far, the Aurora guys and gals here are awesome, and I've learned a lot more about our cars in the short time I've been a member here. I hope you find your niche here too. As far as your issue goes - Long shot here, but do your speedometer and tachometer still work when all those lights go out?

[scottydl]

Good question... is anything else not working, or just the lights? One thing we've learned is that much of our dash lighting comes from permanent circuitry and is unfortunately not designed to be replaced (as in swapping out light bulbs). Someone should be able to shed more light on this... I'll go ahead and move the topic to "Audio & Electric".

P.S. Welcome to ACNA, Bob!

[Custom88]

this is going to be a retarded question, but you did make sure that the dimming switch is set all the way to bright, correct?

[rchesnav]

Yes- I've tried just to go into manual mode rather than automatic mode, but they still don't work. I was on the PA turnpike alot last week, and when entering a tunnel it would take about 30 seconds for the sensor to kick in, and all the dash lights would go, and then reappear once back in daylight. It's almost like a short- I can faintly see the lights around the two climate control knobs, but the temp and computer displays are gone. I had the car at the dealer I bought it from already, but couldn't leave it for more them a day. I guess it wasn't an easy problem, because they wanted to know if It happened when I changed the radio from the factory-installed one to the present one. The car had the new radio in it when I bought it from them!

[MBowen574]

It really sounds like the dimmer control just went bad... It seems like the dimmer is set all the way to the lowest point and that setting simply isn't bright enough to seem like the lights are on when there are outside light sources.

Here's a way to check: Go to a very remote (or just very very dark) place where no outside lights can interfere, and turn on the parking lights (no fogs!!!) only. See if you can see any/all of the lights. If so, I'd say the dimmer just (somehow) set itself to the lowest (dimmest) setting and then decided to die, and that is the part that needs to be replaced, or at least something that has to do with the dimmer control.

If that doesn't fix it, or those aren't the correct symptoms, I'd say run through all of your fuses (see above about the speedo/tach not working). It could be one of them...

Good luck!

[betonthis1]

tltnd said:

Welcome to the board Bob. I'm fairly new here too, but it's been a great experience so far, the Aurora guys and gals here are awesome, and I've learned a lot more about our cars in the short time I've been a member here. I hope you find your niche here too. As far as your issue goes - Long shot here, but do your speedometer and tachometer still work when all those lights go out?

same here. i have learned so much its amazing. i recently had my Fuel Pressure Regulator replaced for a huge chunk of change and i see there is a step by step faq for that same thing. could of saved my tons of money.

[colinbanfield]

I had this problem a couple of months ago. The problem appeared and disappeared over about a week and then disappeared altogether. Played around with the sentinal settings but it didn't help. I suspect faulty wiring might be the cause. I've had to repair wiring in two areas of my '97 already.