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1966 Charger - EL dash lights suddenly stopped working.

jmbass98

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Always had an issue with the speedometer light rarely working (sometimes would flicker, was on for at most 4 seconds). Now while mid drive, all the lights shut off. Ten seconds later, flickered slightly while driving for like 10 seconds, then haven't worked since.

I'm hoping this isn't a power pack or other complicated issue. Does anyone have any ideas of what could have caused this? I replaced the 2A instrument fuse, didn't fix, unless that's the wrong fuse?

Other lights still work. Tail, brake, turn, head, etc.. The EL for the radio and shifter stopped working as well.
 
Could be the headlight switch. Rotate the knob and see if they will come on.

If it’s the power pack it’s not complicated, just swap in a new one.
 
There are many guys that fix them , look for an old TV repair guy and talk to them ... a guy fixed my buddies for peanuts and it’s absolutely gorgeous at night ! That’s part of what makes those cars so cool in their own way.
 
You need to do some trouble shooting with multi-meter. Likely you have a short in one or more of the EL items. Any short will take it all EL down !! EL items are 4 gauge rear buckets (makes green glow) , orange needles in each gauge, radios dial indicator and needle, shift indicator (if automatic tranny). Factory power pack is quite robust and will usually shut down if you have a short. ( It's under the dash glove box ). Three connections here, chassis of power pack is ground, orange wire is + 12 volts. White wire is aprox 250 VAC (with dimmer knob full bright). First thing is to electrically disconnect ONLY the white wire from power pack connector. This will eliminate any EL load from power pack. Turn on lights, You should see apx. +12 V on orange wire with full bright setting on dimmer. If not, you may have a bad light switch bad fuse in fuse block. With 12 V applied to power pack, and no load, white wire disconnected, do you hear a high pitched whine coming from power pack ? If so, power pack is good and you should be able to measure apx. 250 VAC between ground and white wire of power pack and ground.
EL items need to be disconnected at the item's connector and re-connected one at a time till you find the defective item. Keep in mind you could have more than one short, an item could have an intermittent short as indicated by the flicker you described. Also, you may not be able to simply measure the white wire on ohms setting to see the "short". Many EL shorts only happen with the hi volts applied. Once you narrow down where the problem is, you need to contact Mark, "The Gauge Doc", unless you know how to fix these EL problems, which is not simple, and you risk ruining the gauge(s) which are becoming very hard to find. https://thegaugedoc.com/ Good Luck with it..
 
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