so the night begins when i snap my oil pressure switch inside my engine.... which is a problem.. because the oil pressure switch is on a plumbing street tee... one end goes from the block to the pressure switch.. the other opening goes to my turbo oil feed...

so now i have n opressure switch... or turbo feed..

i extract the snapped piece out of the block luckily.... go get new fittings. plumb it back together.. gravy.. perfect..

so i tackle installing my oil pressure gauge in.. i remove the factory oil pressure switch.. i put the aftermarket sender in it's place... tackled..


i move onto the oil pressure gauge..

i wire the gauge into the same spot i wired in my boost gauge.. the dash dimmer.

now i have absolutely no cluster lighting..

my headlights work fine.. so do ALLL my exterior lights.. 4 ways.. blinkers..

my radio works fine.. my digital clock works fine.. even my dome lights and dummy warning lights work fine.. but i have NO dash lighting.. or gauge lighting for my boost or oil pres. gauges..


checked every single fuse and relay in the driver's compartment fusepanel.. as well as under the hood.. all are fine.

what the F*CK is it then.

car has tinted windows.. running untuned.. i rely on my aftermarket gauges.. and i rely on having a speedo to see infront of me.. especially at night (since the car has tints.. it's black inside.. i cant see what my cluster is doing at all.. and have a little bit of a lead foot.. cant even keep tabs on my speed or anything)

WHAT IS IT.

im getting ready practically to douse the dashboard with varsol and set the whole f*cking thing on fire.....


between my job.... and snapping that fitting.... and now THIS bullshit.. im serioulsy fed up..

someone PLEASE shed some helpful light PLEASE..

is there a relay for the cluster somewhere??? is there a fuse i dont know about?????

 

does your car have a dimmer switch?

for some reason when my car did the same sh*t it didnt blow a fuse or a relay...just blew the dimmer switch

 

yeah it's got the stupid little dimmer switch.

I guess ill goto the scrappers today after my interview, or tomorrow or the weekend and look for a dimmer switch.

is there a way of just bypassing the dimmer switch all together? it's not like i even ever USE the damn thing.. i just leave the gauges on bright all the time LOL

 

I know this probably won't help cause I got an '02 Accent, but when I got my reverse glow gauges, the instructions said not to tap into the dimmer switch cause it can't provide enough power and can blow it, so I'm thinking you may have to tap into your parking light wires like I did. That way, you bypass your dimmer switch and they'll come on whenever you have your lights on, at least thats what I'd do since you have multiple gauges and that might as well be the safest way to do it.

 

Yeah, you can take the wire going into the dimmer switch and splice it to the wire coming out of the dimmer switch to bypass it and the gauges will be on full brightness all the time that your lights are on.

 

hmmmm.. now which wire do i splice to which wire? LOL

it's a 3 prong connector, where all the wires go "into" the dimmer in my case.

 

Take the one that has 12v+ only when the parking lights are on and splice it to the output wire going to the gauges.

 

you dont even need to do that

take the dimmer switch wiring and find the ground

the way the dimmer switch works is by varing resistance in the ground once you find the ground use a spade connector and ground it to the member behind the dash

its rather simple i had it that way for YEARS on my pile of sh*t j2

no cuttin no splicing

 

so you're saying to take the ground wire.. going to the dimmer, and ground it on the dashboard reebar? im lost. then again, im pretty drunk right now. hah

 

upon further inspection, with an led flashlight, the stupid LH tail fuse had a tiny tiny crack in it. probably age and heat fatique.

gauges both work again, so does the cluster.

although i think my pressure gauge sender is a dud. i've tried grounding in numerous good locations, im gonna try wiriing the gauge to it's own separate power vs tapping where the other gauge is already. and going to run a separate ground for each gauge vs both into one.

i start the car.. oil pres is 50-60psi.. after warmup, it drops down to 20-22.. when i blip the throttle or drive, it goes up or down accordingly, but shortly after each drive.. the oil pressure gauge will just drop to zero. when i go faster.. it'll go up accordingly.. when i slow down to a stop, goes to zero.. vs 20-22 which is factory oil pressure at idle.


all else fails, i'll replace the sender and hope for the best.