Hi guys, changed out my dash bulbs the other day to new blue leds that I bought. For some odd reason my dash is still very dark. There must be a few bulbs not working still. I looked at the contacts when inserting the bulbs and putting the new ones in. Not much too it. however just wondering what could be the issue? potentially faulty bulbs? Looks like the bulbs are all making contact.

Its like my dash looks the same as before with burnt out bulbs just different color ( its blue now )

 

Ford instrument clusters usually have 6 bulbs, 3 are on one circuit and 3 on another.

And there is the dimmer control that powers both and the also the radio bulb and other cab lights.
Does the dimmer control work?
Can you dim the current bulbs down and up?
If not then dimmer may be broken and stuck at a lower light level

 

I tried messing with the dimmer, it dims the lights down very slightly but not much change at all. If you look at my cluster the left hand side isnt too bad however I cant read my speed barely as theres no light and the right side by the battery gage has no light at all. whats best method for troubleshooting the dimmer?


Thanks!

 

Im gonna go with it depends on the LEDs you purchased. Things like brightness of the led and the angle of the light spread. LEDs can be a tough to get all the dead spots out.



For mine I had to use some LED strips to fill it out.

 

LEDs are also polarized, by their nature. Did you test it before you threw it back together? It's possible a few of them are backwards.

 

That is another option. You always test before putting everything back together.

 

Hi, thanks for the ideas. Didn't know the Leds were polarized. I figured they would work on boths sides as there was connectors on both sides. No i didn't do a final check because it was bright out when i was replacing them and it appeared to be all working in the day time. I'll try it again shortly. Thanks

 

There should be two multi-wire connectors on the back of the cluster, one will have a wire that powers the left side the other will have a wire that powers the right side.

Dimmer is different for different years, some years have it in the headlight switch others have a separate Dimmer "thumb wheel"

But reads like you do need to replace that for sure, could be the problem in the cluster, but it isn't working for the other bulbs either so......