LED Lights in Insturment Cluster go On/Off at Random

[King$nake]

I did an Explorer Sport Trac Gauge Swap and while I was at it, I ordered LED lights to replace the stock bulbs to give my Insturment Cluster a nicer look. (I also did a write-up on this here about 8-9 months ago). Anyways, awhile back, after everything was working fine, an LED stopped working, but it would come on and work periodically. The light in question is on the right side, behind the speedo. Whats even stranger is now when the light in question DOES work, my HVAC light will stop working, its like they take turns? What could be causing this, its driving me nuts? BTW the Speedo light has not come on at all in about 3 weeks, where before it would go on/off.

Please Advise

Thanks
Joe

 

[budwich]

it is possibly a bad / corroded / broken splice near the top of the instrument panel... which is a "mega" splice for lots of stuff.

 

[slowmod'01]

I have a similar situation with mine, i did the sport trac gauges as well but left the factory bulbs. Every few days a different light will shut off, one day it will be the gas gauge, few days later the left side of the speedo, etc. Usually a quick smack to the top of the dash board fixes the problem for a little while. i think the contacts where the bulbs snap in are either becoming corroded or just loose, that whole circuit overlay just looks flimsy/cheap compared to the one on my factory cluster.

 

[King$nake]

Yea. If you find out whats going on, let me know! I may take the cluster out and clean all the contacts, but thats a big job just to clean some contacts, especially if it doesnt work!

Nice to know I am not the only one though

 

[slowmod'01]

the problem continued, except this time the smack to the top of the dash only fixed the speedo.. gas gauge didn't come back. I pulled the cluster out (with the parking lights on), the gas gauge came on, the right side of the speedo went off. Pulled those two bulbs, the tops of both domes were discolored / black. Put a continuity meter w/audio feature on the bulb contacts, had cont. on the bulb till i bumped it against the table, the other bulb was the exact opposite, apparently the filaments have broken just right or are somehow shorting. I replaced both bulbs, and so far i have not been able to shock the cluster and get them to shut off.

 

[slowmod'01]

I just re-read your original post and noticed that you said LED lights. I did this same thing with the headlights on my John Deere (gives it that HID look at night.. i was bored), anyway the bulbs that it uses (1156) has about 12-15 LED's each, i do have an occassional issue with 3-4 of the LED's cutting in and out. Not sure if this is just a vibration issue or if it is problem with the LED. I also have LED license plate bulbs on my mustang, it has only happened once but one of them stopped working one night but came back on when i opened and closed the trunk.