Today I was changing the tiny bulbs in the center console gauges of my car with new LED ones. It was working fine until I put the last bulb in. Once i turned on my lights to see if all the gauges were lit, none of them turned on. I tested the gauges with a multimeter and found that none of the bulbs were receiving power. Did I accidentally break something? No fuses are out. Thanks everyone

Moving the dimmer switch makes no difference

 

Test the power at the dimmer switch -

Do both sides of your parking lamps work?
The instrument lamps are fused with one side of the parking lamps (the bottom 2 fuses)

 

My right side parking lights are out. But the bottom two fuses are not broken and look okay.

 

Whats the voltage at those fuses?
(Tag lights are on one of those fuses, and instrument lights on the other)

 

when I put the probes of the multimeter on either end of the bottom fuse, it reads zero. The one above it reads .03 volts

 

That is checking for voltage drop - the loss of voltage due to resistance between where the meter is touching (positive to positive) If there is no resistance you will get 0 volts.

If you want to measure voltage, one of the leads needs to be touching ground (the body of the car)

One lead on a hopefully positive wire and one lead on a negative wire.

 

My bad. It reads 12V at both fuses.

 

If your parking lights don't work on one side - and you did not remove any wires at the fusebox (to the non working parking lights)

then - how about a fuse that is damaged on the tip - have you tried a new fuse?

And power to the dash rheostat comes directly from one of those bottom fuses -

 

I picked up some new fuses this morning, so both slots have brand new fuses in them. Still no difference. Is there a possibility I pulled apart two wires when I was messing with the gauges?

 

Should be able to trace power from the fuse to the dash light rheostat - then on from there -

 

How many wires should be connected to the dimmer switch? I took the panel off and I see 3 connectors on the dimmer switch, but only 2 of them have wires connected. one connector has red and white wires connected, the other has brown wires connected to it. Is it possible a wire was yanked off the third connector?

 

Is there supposed to be an earth on there? I see one on the wiring diagram

 

empty terminal

 

Update: Read online you can bypass the rheostat without serious consequence. I tried it and it worked! I’ll just put the rheostat back in unconnected