2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse No dash lights, help please

GOBBLES

MEMBER
2001 MITSUBISHI ECLIPSE
4 CYL
FWD
MANUAL
106,000 MILES

My dash lights went out after not driving the car for a few days. (The lights not working are the cluster lights, the "cubby" light, and the HVAC lights. So I checked all the fuses 3 times total, once visually, and twice with a light tester.

Well to get to the point.
I have the dash apart, and the cluster in my hand. When I touch the back of the cluster(where the bulb twist ins make contact to get power) with my light tester, and flip on the headlights, I have light. Could one bad bulb cause all of these to be out? Or could I have a bad ground to my cluster?

7 Replies

KHLOW2008

MECHANIC
41,815 POSTS

Hi gobbles,

Either the bulbs are fused or have poor contact, bad ground, the connector or its wire is bad.

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Saturday, July 5th, 2008 AT 10:05 AM

GOBBLES

MEMBER
4 POSTS

I took the dash cluster apart. When I touch where the bulb connects, with my test light, it lights up when I turn on the headlights. When I touch the ground spots on it, they also light up, when my test light is connected to 12v.

There are three wires going into my dimmer switch. Black, black with yellow, and green with white. Green with white has power when the headlights are on. Black is always grounded, and black with yellow grounds when the headlight switched is flipped on. I changed all of the 194 bulbs out and still have no dash lights.