Digital Dash Dimmer?

[tloftus]

Has anyone found a way to rig up the Digital Dash (89 Cutlass) to allow it to be dimmed. Dimming the interior lights now only pulls down the heater control lights and that digital dash is damn bright at night. I know my mom's Buick Rivera dimmed the digital dash, but not sure if it's possible with this one.

 

Thanks,

Tom

[jeremy]

I don't know about the cutty one, but my GP dimmed...

[tloftus]

I don't know if it's even supposed to dim. As far as I know it never has, I just picked this up a few weeks back though. I found another thread about some swaps and what needed to be done to get the dimmer to work, so I'll look into those a little too.

 

Thanks,

Tom

[Justin]

It should dim, is it possible the cluster may have already been swapped to the nicer one and they messed some wires up? I know what you mean though, when I swapped mine I put the dim wire in the wrong spot and it wouldn't dim... We were driving somewhere late at night and I finally had to put a piece of paper over the cluster it was so bright.

[tloftus]

Do you have a picture of "the nicer one"? I'm not sure which one I have. It has the Spedo / Tach / Batt / Oil Pressure / Temp and Fuel guages. I'm pretty sure it's factory, if not I'm not sure how many miles I really have on this thing. (Shows 95,000mi).

[tloftus]

I'm not putting it in. It came with the car when I got it. It's an 1989. It just won't dim.

 

This is the cluster I have in there now. Again, not sure if it's original or swapped.

 

Thanks,

Tom

 

[GutlessSupreme]

I don't get why the wire wouldn't be there already in a '92.. It's not like the analog gauges don't dim..

[tloftus]

Well I'll tear it apart tonight and see what happens. Can I pull that wire from somewhere easier to get at than the radio? Perhaps from the headlight / dimmer switch itself?

 

Tom

[GutlessSupreme]

Well I'll tear it apart tonight and see what happens. Can I pull that wire from somewhere easier to get at than the radio? Perhaps from the headlight / dimmer switch itself?

 

Tom

 

Sure can. I think you can use the yellow wire, should be in spot C on the C2 connector. Might be a different color for your year. My service manual show's that wire go from the light switch to the cluster and radio.

[tloftus]

Sounds great. I hate taking that stereo out. I'll get to it tonight and let you know! Thanks!

 

Tom

[tloftus]

Hey guys, the brown/white wire is already in the D10 spot. It's showing 12 V + to ground and progressivly goes down as I dim the dimmer, but no change from the guages. Any other ideas?

[tloftus]

I had a feeling someone was going to say that. Is there anything else that controls the dimmer?

[tloftus]

Hey I figured it out. The Brown / White actually dims the cluster, however there's a yellow wire in C10 that is 12VDC switched on / off with the headlights. I wasn't getting anything there with lights on or off, so I spliced in a jumper from the headlight switch to put 12VDC to that pin (C10) and it's working good. The only thing is when you turn on the dome light I believe the cluster should go back to full brightness and it doesn't but I really don't care about that. Otherwise the other cool thing was it doesn't dim with the just the parking lights on - which is good for people like me who think it's cool to drive around in parking lights and fog lights at dusk.

 

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

 

Tom

[joey b]

Davis, can you give a more detailed description of how to wire up a digi since I have the analog.