Insterment Panel Lights - Electrical Guru?

1988 Jeep Cherokee, 6 cyl, 5 speed, 300,000 on a rebuilt engine.

I was wonder if anyone else has run into this. My jeep has a full gauge set up from the factory. During the day, all the gauges work just fine and read correctly. At night when I turn on the headlights, or the parking lights, the insterment panel lights up, but then the temp gauge pegs out all the way to the right. All the other guages are fine. Within a few minutes of driving down the road, the instement panel lights go out and the temp guage returns to normal.

Check the fuse and it's burnt out (5 amp). Replace the fuse and the insterment panel lights will work again whenI turn on the parking or headlights. Start driving and the temp guage pegs and the fuse burns out again.

I'm thinking maybe a short on the back of the copper wire circut board for the guages, or maybe the light switch itself.

Any ideas would be great, otherwise I'll throw a new light switch on it and see if that helps. If not, I guess I could put a new guage cluster in and see if that helps. :doh:

Thanks in advance for any help

Sounds an awful lot like a short or a bad ground to me.

x2 on the short. id be willing to bet its in the cluster

The lights and gauges are all mounted on a flex circuit. The connector plugs through the flex circuit. The problem is that the copper pads on the flex circuit gets corroded and is the most common problem for the Renix clusters. Pull the cluster and the connector and take an eraser and polish up the copper pads.

old_man said:

The lights and gauges are all mounted on a flex circuit. The connector plugs through the flex circuit. The problem is that the copper pads on the flex circuit gets corroded and is the most common problem for the Renix clusters. Pull the cluster and the connector and take an eraser and polish up the copper pads.

Click to expand...

And while you're at it, look up under the driver side dash and you'll see a black brace running from just above your left knee and attaching near the fusebox. There's a black wire attached to the bar with a sheet metal screw.
That's your instrument panel ground. Make sure it's tight.

Thanks everyone
Now there's a new twist - this morning, when I change out the fuse and turn on the lights, it automaticly blows the fuse. Got a short in the dash lights somewhere. I checked the ground wire, it is tight. I'm thinking that "old man" is right, it's most likely the flex circuit. I'll pull the cluster today and try cleaning it up and see what happens. Worst case senrio, I'll try and find a new cluster at the jy and see if that works.
Thanks again, I'll let you know if it works

If you have an auto trans, make sure the light and harness didn't fall down into the shifter and get grounded out. Same with the t/case shifter one.