aram987

Ok, so I've had some issues with my cluster lights since buying the truck a few months ago. It seems that the only light that was consistently on was the one bulb on the far left (if looking at the cluster while seated in the truck), next to the tach (not the oil/temp light). As you can imagine, that makes for a pretty dim cluster. Every now and then the other cluster lights would make an appearance, but only very infrequently, and would go back out pretty quickly.

Yesterday I decided to get in there and sort things out. I took apart the dash and pulled the cluster with the intention of changing the bulbs and sorting out whatever connection issues are going on back there. First thing I did was to swap out all bulbs (changed to leds), and slightly bend the little contact points on the bulb carriers so that they would make better contact with the board on the back of the cluster. Here's where my weird issue came up:

I set everything up so that I could install and remove the bulbs with the dash powered and the lights on (so I could see what's working and what's not). I would install all the bulbs except the one (tach) bulb that was originally on, and they would work. Then I would go to install the tach bulb, and one of three things would happen: 1. the whole cluster would go dark 2. all the bulbs except the one tach bulb would go dark 3. they would all work just fine. I removed and reinstalled the bulb a bunch of times and all three things happened numerous times. I swapped bulb carriers several times as well, same result. Eventually I realized that staring at it and putting a bulb in and taking it out over and over probably wasn't going to fix it, so I got option 3 to happen and put everything back together, had all my lights, was happy. Then about 20 mins into driving, all the lights went out except the one stupid tach light. So, I'm basically back exactly where I started, and it's pretty annoying. There's obviously some kind of short or something going on in that circuit board in the back of the cluster, but I have no idea how to deal with it.

Anyone have any ideas? I'd really like to sort this out without a new cluster (too much $$$, I don't think dash lights are worth more than about $30 to me). The only thought I had was to replace the bulb holders with pigtail holders, splice into the appropriate wires in the connectors, and wire those bulb holders directly (I would actually probably only need one or two power wires that go hot when the lights are turned on, and then splice all the rest in there since led draw is quite low and it's only 5 bulbs). I don't like this plan for two reasons, however: 1. I don't really want to start cutting into my cluster harness 2. I have no idea what wires are what.

Ok, that's enough rambling. If anyone has any ideas, I'd be glad to hear them (or if anyone has a known good cluster for sale cheap, I'd be glad to hear of that too).

Thanks in advance.

aram987

Oh, also this seems to be limited to the illumination lights only. All the idiot lights work, turn signals work, etc... Illumination seems to be the only issue.

aram987

Problem fixed. The power is routed from the connector to the one working light first. Power then is routed out of that light and on down the line to the other lights one after the other. There was a break (tiny little almost invisible break) in the trace sending power from that bulb to the next. A dab of solder on the trace, and it's good as new.