Ive read many of the old posts on lack of lights… i redid my gauge cluster harness (see my fire post) , bench tested everything and works at the bench. Installed dash in car and I get functioning gauges but none of the lights except the ‘brakes’ light.
I know one of my huge issues to solve is to unscramble my fuse box area.
Dash lamps originally get their power from the headlight switch, which has to be pulled out and is adjustable for voltage by rotating the knob. That adjusted power goes to the fuse box (smallest size fuse), then out the other side to all of the dash lamps.
If your bench test of the dash cluster is good, then the problem is somewhere in the underdash harness/fuse box/headlight switch.
Check the most obvious: headlight switch on, rotated to max voltage, check both sides of the fuse box for voltage.
Thanks @Midlife ! It’s a new headlight switch that did make the dash lights happy last year … so I hope that’s OK. The little baby fuse is in it’s holder ‘sketchy’ at best so I’ll check that. I really want to replace the fuse panel with a modern blade fuse box to eliminate variables.
BTW silly question, does the knob get rotated to the right for full voltage or is it to the left? Always hard to tell esp. when the lights won’t wake up
Going out on a limb, have you installed a aftermarket radio? Common mistake is to put the radio gnd into the radio backlight (dash lights) pin of the 2 pin connector, assuming the connector is power and gnd. When i got my car that was the situation, blew the radio internal fuse, external fuse, and fried the headlight switch.
At one point the PO had a radio shack special in the car. But as I’ve been running/testing it there’s just a hole where the radio used to be. There are some rogue wires dangling in the vicinity that are slowly being identified or just wrapped up so they can do no harm while I figure stuff out. Other than tail lights there’s no power to any interior lighting (door lights, under dash lights, overhead console, etc.) at this point. It’s almost like someone purposefully cut wires just because
It looks like the fuse box is just dangling from the wires. The fuse box is supposed to be screwed to the firewall above the accelerator linkage hole where the accelerator linkage passes through the firewall. There is a metal plate missing where the turn signal relay and the circuit breakers mount. You need to re - attach everything.
Looks like you have all the parts. The two screws are 5/16" hex head self tapping #10 screws that hold the fuse block and the plate to the dash. The holes will be there.
