dash lights ? 68 valiant not working

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acpat

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Okay before I only had one light working in front of amp wires. I replaced all bulbs and sockets, cleaned all connections, nothing. Replaced headlight switch and grounded it to column, nothing, took out dash today and cleaned every terminal, checked all bulbs and connections, replaced ignition switch and tumbler cause it was wore out, nothing no dash lights. Cluster screws are tight, cluster is grounded, bulbs are good, sockets are good, headlight switch, dimmer switch, and ignition switch are new. Circuit board looked good nothing obvious wrong. Ideas ?

Turn signal switch is also new. All lights work except dash lights
 
The dash light CIRCUIT is a bit of a trick. It could be anywhere in there, that is "at or in" the cluster, or the rest of the wiring

Power for dash lighting comes "from" the tail fuse, so the tail / park lights have to be working first.

Power goes through the HL switch, through the dimmer control, and BACK to the fuse panel on a tan wire to the INST fuse.

Through that fuse, then out to all dash lighting on orange wiring.

Does ANY of your dash lighting work, heater, radio, shift quadrant?

If not start by checking power at the INST fuse. Parking or head lights must be on, dimmer control twisted to left. Should show power on both ends of that fuse.

From there (orange) feeds up to the cluster. At the cluster, could be the cluster connector, or broken pin -to pc board at the harness pins.

Of course it could ALSO be that "all" of the bulbs or sockets could be bad. Didn't you test it "out of the car?
 
parking lights all work, radio delete, lighter delete car, Tail. parking lights, side marker lights and brake lights work. When I left my friends house last night I had no tail lights. turned around and went back and by time I pulled it in the shop they were working again. I replaced headlight switch today due to that. Heater works. One dash light worked till today now none do. Basically everything works on the car except dash lights. hoping you would drop in lol

Bulbs and sockets are all new. pins were all good/none broken. no did not test it :-(

Only two lights/bulbs work. high beam indicator light and right turn signal light flashes.
 
i seem to be having the same problem with mine i was told to check the ground from your column and the same things that you did or where told nothing seemed to work for me either i have power at the switch and if you put the test light on the output and turn the dimmer it does dim the test light but someone told me to check the wires going to my ebrake apparently they may be the problem i'm guessing because it breaks the circuit i'm not sure if thats really the case but i guess it's worth a shot if you figure yours out let me know maybe i can get mine working
 
denied88 said:
i seem to be having the same problem with mine i was told to check the ground from your column and the same things that you did or where told nothing seemed to work for me either i have power at the switch and if you put the test light on the output and turn the dimmer it does dim the test light but someone told me to check the wires going to my ebrake apparently they may be the problem i'm guessing because it breaks the circuit i'm not sure if thats really the case but i guess it's worth a shot if you figure yours out let me know maybe i can get mine working
Click to expand...

Nothing to do with the ebrake

As I said check the inst fuse in the fuse panel. For many many years that fuse was at one end of the fuse box. IT ONLY gets power

tail / park or headlights on

tail circuit works

dimmer control to left

You then should have power at both ends of that fuse.

If you do look for other bulbs outside the cluster, radio, heater, etc. Do they work?

All the dash lamps "split off" from that fuse on orange wiring and one of them feeds to the cluster.

If the cluster is not grounded you will have other problems......indicator will "act weird" as will the gauges, etc
 
cold as hell so I went out and put car in garage. turned on lights and low and behold the right side of the instrument panel lit up (never worked before was always the left side that worked). went back out as I pulled it in garage lol (nothing working again). I will work on it again tuesday when I am off. I have to remove the bench seat so I can get under there without standing on my head.

67Dart273 thank you. I think the orange wire may be my culprit as it was loose in the connection to the back of cluster. It pulled out the front of the connection when I removed the cluster. I will check everything you advised tues/wed. Thanks again
 
ground path is a daisy chain of parts. Grounding the panel to the dash helps only when the dash also has a chassis ground path continuing to the batt' neg' post. The ground strap from chassis to engine block is a part of this path.
Can a few parts find themselves a path through something like speedo cable ? Yep
 
Something else just occurred to my failing brain.... You said you cleaned all connections at circuit board. Did that include its ground connections. In most cases, every screw that holds the circuit board on the housing is a chassis ground path. Even the kept washers on those screws can break the daisy chain.
 
Sounds like one of the pins for that big round plug on the circuit board are loose wiggle it and see if you get Any lights
 
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