I have this problem with my gauge lights not lighting up. No fuses are blown by the pedals, ive replaced the bulbs behind my cluster and switched out harness's. Ive tried many other things like finding a better ground for my stereo and also making sure any extra wires arent expossed to touching any metal with the wire therefore causing a short. so i seriously dont kno what i can do to fix this problem. also my headlight return motors dont work. what could fix this? a new switch? a new motor? what? any help/ suggestions would b great.

thanks.
erich

 

your dash lights sound like it's your dimmer switch. if your headlights go up but not down it's probably a bad relay.

the dimmer switch can be bypassed with a fused (5amp) jumper wire. for the headlights pop them up then switch the relays around and see if they come down.

 

kk. coulddnt i just get a new dimmer. even though ive tried a new one already. what if my wires r fried?

 

you could get a new dimmer, but by new do you mean new to you or new from the dealership. iirc they are about $50 from nissan and that i know of no one else sells them new.

but if your wires are fried anything other than finding and fixing the short will not be of any use. best thing to do would be to get fsm and look for a short in the wires.

 

ok thanks ill try looking for some of those.

 

which wire did you ground behind the radio? The one that is yellow and red needs to be grounded if the dimmer switch isnt the culprit.

 

i got the answer so ill put it on here so anyone that has the same problem can fix it.

 

Dunno if you ever fixed that dude's issue, but here is pretty much the definitive solution. My earlier pokes at it didn't work.

I think someone on the FR forums suggested this as well, but the extra here is that you can fix it instead of replacing it. Or you can ground the red wire with the yellow stripe (rather than the orange/white as I'd been told earlier), but evidently that electrically bypasses your dimmer (makes sense if you're completing the circuit prematurely without passing through the dimmer on the way to ground state.

BTW--thanks for the slap in the brain on Saturday. Had my f*cking e-brake on -- jeebus f*cking christ. Once I got past that, the rest was butter. Now just letting the hub bolts soak in WD40 before I crack on them tonight.

"It's a common problem in 240's, no dash lights.
If you have had an after market stereo installed in your car and the factory nissan wire harness was cut off to wire the new unit there is a big chance that your TCU is burned out. The TCU is a timing control unit. It is a small white box that is located to the left of your fuses that are under the driver side dash.



You can either replace it by pulling one from a car at a junkyard or pay a lot of money for one at a dealers.

The other choice is opening the little box up and soldering a jumper wire over a trace which is burned out with a soldering iron that you can buy at radioshack for 5 bucks. Soldering it will only take a minute if you have the skills.

If you take it off and unscrew it, you will see a Printed Circuit Board with a lot of mounted components. The side with fewer mounted components that looks like it has green paths running around will most likely have one of those traces burned out. You can tell if its is black. I didn't replace my unit and just fixed it buy soldering in a wire where the burned out trace was. But if you find that yours is burned out you can just replace it, and that will fix the problem too.

The problem is the circuit that lights the dashboard lights, as well as the climate control *****, and glove compartment is powered by a red wire with yellow stripe (-) and red wire with blue stripe (+). These wires also go to the wire harness for the stereo and are usually not used.

If they are touched together during the stereo installation the TCU gets fried. Usually the fuse in the dimmer switch should go first, but after opening the TCU, I have found that the PCB (printed circuit board) is made by hand. I have some experience in PCB design and notice a lot of design errors. The traces that run on the board are to thin in some areas, so the TCU is the first to go.

I have seen people fix the problem by grounding the red wire with yellow stripe. This will fix the problem, however the dimmer switch will not work after you have done that."

 

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y11...Picture003.jpg

 

thats the box its talking about.

 

Why would you waste all your time and money doing that when you can just ground the red and yellow wire? I cant think of one time on any car that I have ever used the dimmer switch.

 

i did. plus the red with yellow is used for my aftermarket stereo.

 

It shouldn't be. Did you wire it into the "illumination" circuit for the head unit?

 

The head unit. It was already in the stock one so i put it into the new one thats why.