Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Electrical problems!! Help!!!!

Well this site was down for a couple of days so traffic has decreased a little. Anyhow I'll check for your posts over the next few days. BTW I checked my Contour and you may have to remove trim piece under steering wheel to gain access. I'm not sure if you can gain access from front of dash by removing fascia. I've only had clock out but its removal may help to provide a means of seeing rear of dimmer. OEM radio removal may also help but that can be difficult.

The other electrical connector I have in mind is behind right kick panel but that requires removal of one piece door threshold trim. I'll have to refresh memory of circuitry before your next post.

Get back to me re your observations/concerns and re-read my past posts to see if any of my questions are left unanswered (e.g. blown fuse #), I'll do same.

AirKnight:
Feel free to join in by describing your symptoms, perhaps we can kill 2 birds with one online diagnosis.

Maybe the actual headlight switch. Try borrowing one of your friends and see if that fixes the problem. If you have ever left your headlights/parking lights on while your engine is not running, heat has built up inside the switch causing the cheap ass plastic connectors to melt. This just might be the problem, although I'm still think of a way this would blow the fuse.

I'm not sure about this though... Wouldn't leaving the lights on be the same as having the light on when the car is running?

OK guys--

The wiring that is lining my trunk may have something to do with the lights being out. One of the wires has actually worn in half. I've been told that it's not really a big deal to fix, it just needs to be spliced back together. So we'll try that and hope it works. (By the way, the trunk wiring is to fix my back-up lights, which are also out.) As far as the fuses go and the instrument panel lights, it was a 7.5 brown fuse. I've also been messing with the fuse box that's under the hood, but everything seems to fine there. oh well. Feel free to reply.

I'll watch for your next post, please advise fuse position number at that time.

Are you still having trouble with the instrument lights? What did you do when you said you tried the dimmer switch? Did you replace it? I didn't think that was the problem initially because they would go out once in a while and come back, but the dimmer switch on the dash was replaced and when I looked at the old one, it was all covered up with carbon on the dial.

Almost identical to my problem. It was the headlamp switch in my case. There are quite a few wires that go into and come out of the headlamp switch. One side of the car has its own wire, the other side, another, and the license plate lamps, yet another. Part of the switch can go out (what happened with me) causing the circut to stay open. In my case the park lamps were not coming on. A quick test with a jumper told me that it was the switch (I jumped it at the switch).

Thanks for replying. Yeah, Im still having problems with my instrument panel lights. The dimmer dial is the first thing I tried, and that doesn't help, although I never thought about replacing it. Is it something that I (or someone I know) can do, or do I have to take it back to the dealership? The more I can do on my own and keep it away from the dealership, the better I feel. Also, every time I replace the fuse that goes to those lights, it blows immediately. There's gotta be something going on internally, I just don't know what. I'm about to go outside and look at the position, number, etc., and I'll post it later. Again, thanks for replying!!