problem with interior lights.

[Jamesmartin]

I have searched this thread on this site for a long time now. One thread got close to an answer but the link was screwed up. The problems that I am having are,

1) the clock light goes on when the ignition is in acc or on position, but off when the headlights/parking lights are turned on... so it is doing the opposite of what it should be doing

2) the instrument lights will not light up no matter what combination of ignition position, or headlight position i choose... the stuff like abs, ebrake, battery, etc all lights up when the car is in acc or whatever, but the main instrument lights like the ones behind gas, tach, speedo, and temp gauges wont come on...

i have checked fuses... this problem has come about since my deck was stolen and i put the stock deck back in... the stock deck works fine now but the cluster does not work.... at one point the stock deck would reset itself when i turned the lights on, but the cluster would work... now the cluster does not work, but the deck resets itself when i turn the headlights on...

If anyone can help me with this it was be really helpful.

[vancouverbc]

I dont think you will get a specific answer.The simpliest thing to do is look at all the wires that go to the deck and understand their purpose. You should be able to identify the wrong wire by a process of elimination. The wiring diagrams are quite convoluted if you want to try to understand the logic. you have obviously wired the deck to the headlights/instrument cluster in someway. There are diagrams in the fsm in my signature.

[ricebike]

after all that mess... try this:

pull driver side door sill panel... pull driver side kick panel... see a white box- take it out... unplug & use a precision or small flatblade screwdriver to pry the box open to see the circuit board...

check the board for any "burnt" opens... some peeps call this the TCU or whateva, i forgot...

mebbe find more info via search on this; I personally found it for my specific problem/ after theives stole stereo... a blue wire touched ground & i saw sparks while driving my car back to NJ to repair this crap after the incident... BOOM! no interior dash lights.

others also stated that the dimmer switch on the console would also like to act as a fuse, but I never seen confirmation of this on these boards. I'd hunt for that white box 1st...not that hard to remove & do a visual.

I soldered that path back together w/ dolla store tools/solder & have been working eva since then!

[180sx]

hmm same problem here car already had a deck in it and was working fine, than i day at night lights went blink blink , came back blink blink and were gone forever. haah i had silvia s13 conv put on like3 days before it happend. So itraced all my wires and 1 blinker was discounected? wtf , i reconected it and still no go.Same issue no dash light all my corners and rear night lights don't work. So far i had" cluster replaced, lights bulbs in cluster replaced, all wires and grounds traced. tcu(white box ) pulled found a fried track haahfixed it ...well that didn't fix anything. also checked black (tcu)box next to white all good there too.double checked my lightbulbs all around (close cercuit)all goodtriple checked fusses in the kicker. ALL GOODDang Make sure you post wqhat u found out.

But my next step is relays and large fuses u/hood. ALT fuse and another 100amp fuse (i think ALT fuse is our issue thow, looks like by grounding out my blinker when wire came apart it blew the tcu track than the alt fuse.)I remamber fixing up my buddies 240 years ago and thats what happend to his bad ground in the corner light , it blew out the ALT fuse, changed it kaboom here goes fuse #2 . found the damn ground, shiet his socket melted around the bulb ahha. We got an extra fuse+ extra corner light housing with new light bulb......worked fine since.

[Jamesmartin]

Man the guys on this site the the flipping best. Im going to tear my car apart tomorrow morning and i going to check out everything you guys suggested, Thanks a lot.

[vancouverbc]

article on white box:

zerothread/158162

the wire from the headlight switch to instrument cluster is red-green.blue, green , and red-black wires are related to both cluster and radio.

[Syes200]

If you can just try replacing the dimmer switch. I had the same problem with my nissan, headlights worked but nothing inside did even though the little lightbulb on the dimmer switch was lit. I replaced that little cluster and now it works just fine.