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1997 LeSabre dash lights "Dark"


05SHADOW
04-19-2008, 03:36 PM
I have A 1997 Buick LeSabre with 178K miles on it. The dash lights stopped working on the insterment cluster,factory radio,heat,a/c controls and everything else that would normally light up when the headlights are on, wether the light switch is used or turned on automatically. The factory radio display lights dim way down so they can hardly be seen when the headlights on and bright otherwise. All the fuses check out good. According to the owners manual the parking lights and the dash lights use the same fuse and the parking lights work. The slide dimmer does'nt change anything, but it still turns on the dome lights. I pulled off the dimmer/twilight sentinial control off to see if maybe it was a bad or poor connection. No such luck. I grabbed my ohm meter and found what might be the 2 pins for the dimmer control. It appears to be good. I have a chilton repair manual and the wiring diagrams are very general and not very specific in this area, but the manual shows that the dimmer/twilight sentinial control feeds into the light control module. The module was found and it was pulled off and opened up. Nothing looks burned,fried or coroaded up on this circuit board. I hooked it up without the protective case on it and procceded to run tests. Dash lights still dont work. There are 4 relays on this circuit board. 1 relay is for the parking lights. 2 of the last 3 are for the lo-beam,hi-beam headlamps. I dont know what the 4th relay is for and after turning every switch on and off in the car and watching the relay,nothing happened. So with the lights on I mannually connected the tips together to see if the dash lights worked, and again nothing. I'm hoping that maybe someone might be able to lead me in the right direction?
Thank You , Jay

HotZ28
04-19-2008, 04:10 PM
There are 4 relays on this circuit board. 1 relay is for the parking lights. 2 of the last 3 are for the lo-beam,hi-beam headlamps. I dont know what the 4th relay is for and after turning every switch on and off in the car and watching the relay,nothing happened. So with the lights on I mannually connected the tips together to see if the dash lights worked, and again nothing.Like you, I am not sure where the dimmer control goes after going into the LCM, however, the 4th relay in the LCM appears to be for the IC "high beam indicator".

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