Hi all, been a lurker for a few years. Did a search but can't seem to find what I am looking for. 2001 SE, 60K. NICE car which replaced my 97 that got t-boned with me in it (another story). BUT this 01 has always had very dim speedo/tach/fuel and temp gauge lighting at night. The dimmer works but it's not bright at all, in fact I'd say on it's highest setting I would conside it the lowest on any other vehicle. SO my question is could this simply be fried bulbs or is there some other gizmo that might be creating the problem. I have NO electrical issues or other ligthing problems?

THANKS!!!

Peter Chicago IL.

my 03 se had the same problem. all the bulbs were good. its what got me looking to do a color change. if you want to keep the white look you can order them from autolumination.com they have a few colors and white. they are quite a bit brighter with the 3x brighter leds.

I might just do that. It seems counter productive to have a dimmer control when at 1/2 dim they disappear and on Full they are barely visable. DO the bulbs they supply simply plug in to the existing unit? Can they tell me what I need? I have the manual from Nissan so I know what the stock bulbs are.

Thanks for the reply.

Peter

the dimmer switch uses variable resistance to control how much current is sent to your dash lights. it sounds like you have a faulty dimmer switch. you can either replace the dimmer switch or hot-wire the output to a constant 12v and have your dash lights always at their brightest setting. in my pathy, i always have it at the highest setting and it doesn't bother me.

replacing the bulbs with LEDs does not address the problem, it only hides one of the symptoms (if even that). for the money, i'd get a dimmer switch from the junkyard, before i dropped any dough on a set of LED dash gauge lights.

From looking at the FSM, it looks like the dimmer switch sits between thebulbs and ground, not between +12 and the bulbs. But it has three connections:+12 (P/G) , Ground (B), and one that goes to the bulbs (P/ B). Unfortuately, I can find aschematic for what it looks like inside. MMMM, now that I think about it, it'sprobably wired as a poteniometer: +12 and ground to the two ends, andthe wire to the bulbs on the wiper that sweeps from one end to the other.