Rheostat and Air Conditioning Lights

[Felix_29]

I'm having trouble with my rhostat its not properly dimming the instrumentation cluster. as soon as I take it off full power it automatically goes dark and if I turn the knob back near the beginning I get a bit of light and sometimes even at full power its as dim as it should normally be at the beginning. I think the shifter plate needs to be taken off and the connections just need a cleaning. I also have a bulb that's burned out on my dashboard on the A/C control that bulb that brightens up all the symbol settings. Do I need to take apart the whole center console to access what I need to do a repair?

[Cory W]

I'm having trouble with my rhostat its not properly dimming the instrumentation cluster. as soon as I take it off full power it automatically goes dark and if I turn the knob back near the beginning I get a bit of light and sometimes even at full power its as dim as it should normally be at the beginning. I think the shifter plate needs to be taken off and the connections just need a cleaning.

The other car up here had that issue. We verified the wiring against my car, just to make sure everything was in the same place. We also made absolutely certain the wires were good and the connectors were clean. Made a huge difference.

EDIT: Just for reference, here's how mine is wired up.
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I also have a bulb that's burned out on my dashboard on the A/C control that bulb that brightens up all the symbol settings. Do I need to take apart the whole center console to access what I need to do a repair?

There are four lights under there. If you're good with your fingers, you might be able to do it by removing just the HVAC faceplate. The bulbs require you to twist/push a bit to remove or install. The worst thing that can happen is the light pushes out of the little plastic tube that holds it in place. There's a big enough hole in the bottom of the HVAC bracket to move around if your fingers are small enough and dexterity is good enough.

Do you have the bulb already? They can be a bit of a pain to find. If you need one, let me know and we can see if Canada Post can move one intact.

[Rich]

I'm having trouble with my rhostat....as soon as I take it off full power it automatically goes dark and if I turn the knob back near the beginning I get a bit of light and sometimes even at full power its as dim as it should normally be at the beginning. I think the shifter plate needs to be taken off and the connections just need a cleaning.....

There are three options around a glitchy dash light rheostat.

You mention one, cleaning the rheostat. The connections are likely not the problem, it's probably dirty or broken windings inside the rheostat. Contact cleaner (spray can with nozzle) and some disassembly is required.

A second solution is replacing the rheostat.

The third option is to jump the rheostat - get it out of the circuit. When I did this our D's dash lights brightened a bit vs. full-bright rheo setting. Not an option if you see the need for OEM dimming but it's a reversible fix if you want to try it.

[Felix_29]

Cory and Rich. Thanks for the help. It turns out that bulb that I thought was burned out is all of a sudden working again as soon as the Rheostat was jumped to the full bright position. So I don't need the bulb it would seem Cory but thanks for offering. Everything is back working again as normal. All my dash and binnacle lights seem brighter too. I think that Rheostat was giving me trouble like tonsils that needed to be removed.