Back in July I hit a bump and my dash lights went out. I have looked through the forums and I can’t find anything that pertains to me. Fuse is good, replaced anyway. Brake lights work, park lights work. It’s not the fuse.

ive attached pics. The warning bulbs work. My window button bulbs work. But the lights will not light up on my gauges, or the headlamp switch (exception fog light lights up, that tells you fog lamps are on) Fan speed, ac/heat doesnt light up.

what could cause this: with it getting dark earlier I’m going insane lol!

 

I would pull your cluster and inspect the connector for loose/damaged wires.

 

Just thought of something. Could a bad headlamp switch affect just these lights?

 

Is it possible maybe, the electrical diagrams for older fords are not well written and I stopped after about five minutes, the diagrams in haynes manuals for vehicles I own are better written.
List everything that does light up when the headlights are on and everything that does not light up.
Have you done any dash work recently?
What happens when you adjust the dimmer switch, all the way bright should turn on the interior overhead lights.

 

The dimmer switch has never dimmed or brightened the dash lights. It does turn on interior lights all the way up. The dash lights always stayed bright, even when it was rolled all the way down.

only things that lights up when lights are on is the window buttons and lock buttons. That is it.

 

Check if your cigar lighter works.

 

Yes, it works.

 

OK here are the wiring diagrams. You should look through and cross off all the parts that work correctly and then we can look at the other stuff. They are for illumination and for instrument cluster. Sounds like its going to be a single issue and eliminating all the lights that are working correctly so we can ignore them and look for a shared wire/ground/ect for all the inop stuff.
Like I said the wiring diagrams are not very good. I have also included the connector views for the instrument cluster.

 

Thank you for those! Unfortunately my cluster decided to completely die. I’m hoping it’s just something in the cluster. I just bought a new one for $125 with free mileage programming. It gets here Saturday; I’m gonna install it and hope everything works including the lights :-)

 

Found the ground to the right of fuse box attached to frame had rusted through moved the 3 wire ground higher on frame my problem solved


the frame tends to start rusting there