Dashboard lighting

[Brekizer]

Good day,

Since a couple of weeks my dashboard lighting started to fail,
First it was just the middle of the speedo which stopped lighting, later everything.

I've noticed that sometimes the lighting starts to blink a little bit.. but I've had that twice in 4 weeks.

I'm not a hero with electric parts

Does anyone have a idea what could be the culprit?

[RedArrow]

I had this once and it developed into a bigger problem : the alternator wasnt charging anymore.
My ignition switch also had to get replaced.

I had to carefully inspect the cluster and I found a broken connector with wires and solders that were cracked and had to be redone.
Somewhere in the lower middle area (center) there is a connector under a plastic cover that was completely broken and chipped with it a part out of the main "motherboard" lol.

I found an 87 780 cluster and used that for creating 1 working cluster out of 2clusters for the 86 745 by swapping good bertone parts into my cluster.

Check and TEST all wire routings for continuity and check solders as step 1.
Good luck to figure this annoying trouble.

My issues started showing when i steered left a lot. Like at u-turns when the wires somehow got pulled i think.
Later it developed into a real pain daily...

[Brekizer]

Originally Posted by RedArrow

I had this once and it developed into a bigger problem : the alternator wasnt charging anymore.
My ignition switch also had to get replaced.

I had to carefully inspect the cluster and I found a broken connector with wires and solders that were cracked and had to be redone.
Somewhere in the lower middle area (center) there is a connector under a plastic cover that was completely broken and chipped with it a part out of the main "motherboard" lol.

You mean in the area around the dashboard/clocks itself?

I found an 87 780 cluster and used that for creating 1 working cluster out of 2clusters for the 86 745 by swapping good bertone parts into my cluster.

Check and TEST all wire routings for continuity and check solders as step 1.
Good luck to figure this annoying trouble.
Thanks, I'll try this must be fixed.. this is annoying, can't even see how fast I'm going in the dark.

My issues started showing when i steered left a lot. Like at u-turns when the wires somehow got pulled i think.
Later it developed into a real pain daily...
Here it has nothing to do with steering, the blinking even occurred when driving in a straight line.

I'll see if I can fix it, If there are updates I will post them here.

[ngoma]

Originally Posted by Brekizer

I've noticed that sometimes the lighting starts to blink a little bit.. but I've had that twice in 4 weeks.

Was that ALL the lamps in the instrument panel, heater controls included? Or are certain lamps blinking? Or are certain lamps dying one by one?

Some of my instrument panel illumination bulbs (the ones that plug into the little plastic bayonet housings)(not the smallest "grain of wheat" bulbs) had intermittent failures. Solution was cleaning and polishing the bayonet copper contacts and the corresponding copper traces on the flexboard that they make contact with.