Mysterious Dash Lighting

i've got the same problem as you falnfenix...i thought it was just a bulb but i guess i was wrong...

where are they know-it-alls and DIY god's when ya need 'em?

heh...i'm going to see if i can't research that tomorrow at work...it's puzzling.

Mysterious Dash Lighting

The lighting for my heater controls works about 10% of the time. I heard this is a fairly common problem for 93-97 Prizms. Any common fix before i tear the dash apart?

flashlight

i've got the same issue...i THINK it's a wiring problem, i.e. something's shorting out. nothing life threatening to the car or you, just annoying.

yeah samething but only the air placement knob

heh...mine's the other side. the temp control's dead...and SOMETIMES the air placement knob lights up, but only after turning it to defrost on heat.

it's so wierd.

Yup, that's what I do, and it always werks

lol, that is sooo what i do all the time. actally it doesnt work for me anymore because i think i banged on it a bit too much. i located the bulb that is "burnt out?" when i was taking apart my interior to paint it, and it looks like the bulb was like permenantly attached to the socket. Im not sure if this is take-off-able. im not really in the mood to take shit apart again, or else i would let the whole world know... but the bulb is definitly accesable.

DIY....bang on it.

don't bother with changing it to LEDs. my bulb used to have that same problem, i would just tap it and it would stay on, i'm guessing lose wiring or a crappy bulb/connection.

then some asshole broke into my car back in march and messed up my dash trying to get my cd player. well, he broke the bulb, so i figured, i'd replace it with an LED. so i went to autozone, because they had 3 prewired and resistored LEDs in a pack for like $10. so i installed one, yeah, it only shined light right in front of it. so i installed the other two, spacing them out. and i stalled the clear plastic light bar too, well, it shines light on the center and the 2 sides. so i bought 3 more, and it's not much better. leds don't diffuse light, they are too dirrectional for so a small application that requires light to spread out. so i spent $20 on 6 leds and now i have a blotchy looking climate control. just get a xenon bulb replacement and solder it in place, i did that in my lettering (p - r - n - d - 2 - 1) and it's so much better looking now, just runs a little hotter

bang harder.

heh...you said "bang harder"...

another idea was changing it to an LED...but i don't know electronics for shit, so someone would have to help me figure that one out.

CPat - banging on it doesn't work for me for some reason.

the ones in my instrument cluster were that way as well... i just cut the metal holding the bulbs in and ghetto-rigged some 194(?)s in there

yeah, banging on it used to work everytime, now it only works sometime (on the 93 DX air controls)


it also happened to the lights on the shifter (automatic) and again, banging used to work, but now it doesn't work at all.

this sucks that we have to deal with something stupid like this. i swear, its like the littlest thing, but it seems to piss me off the most!

i replaced mine with 2 led 194's and sodered the wires to the origina socket... kinda pernament solution but no blinking,

the hazard lights signal button light ... now that's a diff story... i need to get around to disassembling that button...

thats odd, i had a 96 prizm, and even after it got broken into and they jacked up my console. everything worked great!