Up until two hours ago my dash lights worked fine.

Just now, turned on the lights, saw a small puff of smoke from behind the instrument panel, now I have no dash lights. Dome light, locks, head/tail/turns, all other electrical work. Just the dash/gear selector/switches/ etc lights are dark.

I pulled every fuse, to no avail, all are good. Switched some around that I thought might be the culprit. Nothing.

I shouldn't say that ALL the dash lights are dark. When I turn on the headlights, the left turn signal, the hi-beam indicator, and the rear fog indicator light up about 1/3 to 1/2 brightness.

Any help in tracking down the culprit would be appreciated.

 

Maybe the dimmer is bad or soemthing on the back of the cluster fried.
I would pull the cluster and check it out.

 

The cluster is out now. How would I determine whether something's fried? And since it's unhooked, do you know why I might not have lights still?

 

You would clearly see a burnt spot if something fried.
You might be able to OHM the dimmer and see if it works. Not sure of what wires it would be though.

 

Getting power into and out of the dimmer, using the slide, it works as it should.

See no tell-tale burn marks. Thing is, it's not just the instrument panel, it's all the dash lights.

 

I think it might be the control module on the back, the unit on the top above the big connector.

I'm getting 12v to white into dimmer, and variable voltage out via the green/brown. From there it goes into the control module on the instrument cluster, then out to all the lights.

 

I would have to agree with you on that one.

 

After further review, and a comparison of a junkyard unit, there WAS a circuit fried on the back of the cluster. I wish I would have seen that earlier--nevermind that you told me to look for it. Thanks for the help.

 

Glad you got it going now.

 

ok

 

My 1990 Volvo GL
I was driving and the exact same thing happened, dash board lights just disappeared, along with the light for the gear shift. All other electric works fine and I had originally checked all the fuses. Could you please explain to me more about the cluster. What does is look like, how do I get to itand how do I fix it?

Thanks in advance,

m

 

Mladen--in response to your question:

The cluster we are speaking of is the instrument cluster. Search the site, you'll see how to pull the trim ring around the cluster and then it's just removing 4 screws to pull the instruments themselves. From there, remove the wiring from the back (take a digital pic for your reference if you doubt your memory) and look at the flexible circuit board that runs the entire back of the unit. In my case, there was a much darker (burnt) spot along one of the circuit strips, which was causing my outage.

Evidently, the power runs from the dimmer, to the instrument cluster, then back out to the rest of the dash.

Hope this helps.

 

Thank you so much. I will give it a try right now.

-M