NO DASH LIGHTS

Ive seen many posts online about this. Some say it's fuse #6. Others say it's the rear wiper or defrost or even a bad tail light. I tried everything I found online and nothing got my recently dark dash to come back on.....until now. I have no doubt that all the things I found online are actual fixes, but apparently there's another scenario/combo that can happen. This is what happened to mine.

My dash lights started to flicker when I touched the fog light switch on the dash. It was obvious there was a bad connection Somewhere.

The dash lights went out after about a week of this.

I checked every fuse on the XJ.....every fuse. No problem found.

I bought a used switch panel with all 3 switches from a junk yard. Nothing.

I kept digging and tracing for wires and shorts but nothing. I redid everything I had already done and looked online again and again.

I found that the rear wiper switch that I bought at the junk yard felt a little funny. I never installed it permanently because I wasn't sure of the root issue yet and didn't want to have a bunch of mixed parts that made it hard to determine the original issue.

Here's What I eventually found to be the problem.

Original rear wiper switch had an issue but wipers still worked. I learned that all 3 switches are tied to dash lights.

When I changed to junk yard switch panel temporarily, the junk yard wiper switch blew my fuse #6 because it was a shot switch. How lucky can I be To have 2 bad switches.

I bought a 3rd junk yard switch and nothing worked but i again checked my 6 fuse and found it blown. Once I replaced it, bingo!

So, I had a short switch, then a bad switch that blew my fuse, and then finally with a good switch and new fuse I HAVE LIGHTS. First 2 switches were checked again and confirmed bad.

FYI. I found my license plate light not lit up at one point but I thumped it and it came on. Didn't impact dashe lights at all.

year?

He's got an '01.

no dash lights usually also means no parking lights.,,,,have you checked those also ??

All of my other lights worked fine. It was only the gauge cluster and my radio dimmer. The rear wiper switch worked fine, but it felt a little spongey instead of a well defined "click". I guess there was just enough wrong inside to cause the problem. Because everything worked, I had ruled out the "bad switch" that I read online. I bought a used switch panel and switches just as a wild card idea because nothing else was found wrong. When I realized the 2nd switch had vlown my fuse 6, I knew it was troubled. I bought a 3rd switch from a junk yard and put it in with a new 6 fuse and everything is fine now.

Had I not gotten another switch when I didn't even think it was needed, I would have never figured it out. Online fixes pointed me to bad bulbs, bad switches, etc. I checked them all and found no obvious issue. The fact that the switch can have a short but appear to be full functioning is why I wanted to post this.

I have found another post that mentioned a switch that functioned but the light on the switch itself was burned out and caused the dash light outage.

I hope this helps somebody dig a little deeper if they run into the same issue. I guess sometimes you have to spend a little extra on parts you may or may not need to do some trial and error fixes.