Over the past few months, I have had some electrical gremlins plague my '96 DX. The first problem is the HVAC control lights behind the switches that control the air conditioning and heater functions. A few months ago, I noticed that the lights would sometimes not turn on with the headlights, as they are supposed to, and would come on randomly a while later, or sometimes not at all. Now they have ceased to operate completely.

 

The second problem is the ashtray light - it suffered the same fate as the HVAC lights. It would flicker on and off when I opened the tray to get some change (I don't smoke, so it makes a perfect coin tray) and sometimes not come on. Now it too doesn't work.

The reason I am posting this is because I pretty much have the center console pulled apart to change the lightbulb on the automatic gear shift indicator, which has been burned out for quite a while (I don't think this is related to the other lights). It would be immensely helpful to be able to fix all three of my problems at once. I am assuming the ashtray and HVAC lights must be a bad wire or a short because of the way they flickered before they went out, but I can't really be sure... Thanks in advance!

For what it's worth I had similar problems on my 94 G-Touring wagon. My a/c etc HVAC lights went on/off intermittently then died - I assumed they'd burnt out. Finally the other day as part of another project I took another look. Removed the bulbs and to my surprise they tested ok with an ohm meter - so I just cleaned and adjusted the bulb and console contacts and voila, they're back on. I still intend to change them out though, along with every other actually blown bulb I have. I'm looking at using LEDs instead from superbrightleds.com, still doing liesurely research regarding the right ones, I'll need to pull the dash off again but just too busy/tired right now..

Alright guys, its been three days since I took apart the dash and center console, and I found some pretty interesting stuff.

I figured since I was going to completely take apart the dash anyway, I might as well just buy some new bulbs to test out - if they flicker or don't work at all, then hey, I know what the problem is now. So I first installed the ashtray light, then the shift indicator light, and then finally the HVAC bulb a day later. The interesting things is.... All the bulbs work perfectly now!

I did examine the bulbs I took out, and they all had the tell-tale darkening on the inside of the glass beside the filiament (looks a lot like smoke) that normally points to a blown bulb - and in this case, that's exactly what it was! I guess I was just a victim of coincidence that two of the three gave out around the same time, and that they both flickered... Maybe the electrical system just didn't like not having that HVAC bulb to supply power to? Anyways, the problem seems to be resolved, and I certainly appreciate the input. Thankfully, this wasn't a worst-case scenario.

I would recommend changing all three at once if anyone else has this problem - you'll need lots of time and patience to get all the dash and console components out, not to mention the time you'll want to spend cleaning them off (218,000 miles and 14 years' worth of dust = SERIOUSLY NASTY). From what I could tell, though, these bulbs appeared to be the factory original ones. With any luck, I think it's safe to say they'll last quite a long time. On a side note, I never realized what kind of horrible things lurked beneath the trim pieces of my car... spilled drinks from other members of the family, strange hairs, loose change, man-eating dust bunnies, etc.

Anyways, thanks for the input guys! Glad to have this problem solved and out of the way.