jimmydaux

Good morning to all!

I have another "my dash lights died" problem that I need to find a solution to.

I tried to swap in an 07-08 non navi radio display screen. Im not going to say that swap would be impossible, but it would be extremely difficult without some rather extensive knowledge of how the acura wiring system worked. Bottom line there, I abandoned the idea of the screen swap and started putting everything back togeter. I had everything basically back together and noticed that I had one of the red hvac bulbs that was out. I pulled the unit back out and retardedly tried to make sure that bulb was seated properly with a screwdriver. I didnt even think about the fact that that bulb had electrical contacts on the back of the bulb. Shorting those contacts killed power to all of the hvac bulbs. I have read that once those bulbs go, you basically have to replace the radio screen display board to get them back. I thought I was clever in pulling the wires that supply power to the hvac bulbs from the connectors and then splicing them into the gear shift bulb circuit. THis worked when I tested it and even allowed the hvac lights to dim with everything else. problem is that as I was "testing" this by sticking wires in the bulb socket, I shorted that socket out and it knocked out all of my interior switch/button back lighting. Luckily, I found that for some reason, the "small lights" fuse in the under hood fuse box restored power to everything inside minus the blue accent lights around the radio control knobs. the rest of the lights worked great, however, they did not dim with the gauge dimming circuit. I was fine with this, as they were stuck on at full power.

Skip forward a week... Everything was working wonderfully, until one day they just died. All fuses have been inspected and are in good order. Last night I noticed that the radio control lights have come back on ever so slightly. Im assuming that i either burned up a relay or one of the multiplex circuits.

Thanks chrissyoon for this picture. Everything in the red box is what has died on me. Im assuming the correct way to fix this is to replace the multiplex but im also trying to avoid shelling out $200 dollars on something that I dont know for sure will fix my problem. I know that each of these bulbs have some sort of a variable voltage regulator on boards close to each of the lights that would control the dimming. I think i tested the hvac circuit to be variable from 8v-0v, with 0v producing the higest brightness setting.

If I were to run 12 v directly to the "red" output wire shown on the picture, is there a chance that would turn all of my lights on full brightness? Or is that red a constant 12v that is then controlled by another relay circuit that controls voltage regulation.

Can anyone think of a way to energize the entire circuit with non dimming power just to get the lights to turn on?

Which multiplex would control the lighting. I assume it would be the drivers side box but dont want to guess on something this expensive.

Any insight on this would be extremely helpful. THanks and sorry for the long post. I will follow up with an abridged version if necessary

jimmydaux

I HAVE LIGHTS!!!!!

There are two wires that run to any one of the bulbs that are shown in the red box on the diagram above. After some studying of the manual, I realized that I had been asuming that the red wire was the (+) wire, when in fact, the red wire is the ground (-). The variable brightness control actually works on the negative side to limit the amount of voltage going through these bulbs. In testing everything, I found that my red wire coming from the fuse panel was grounded when the lights were off, but was not grounded when the light switch was turned on. My fix, however unconventional, was to cut the red wire coming from the fuse box and run a new ground to the red wire that went into the harness. The power for these lights is provided by the "small lights" fuse and tail light relay under the dash. By cutting the red wire at the driverside fuse panel and connecting the harness wire to ground, you effectively complete the circuit. My switch backlighting no longer dims. The lights come on full power.

This fix will only work if there is power(+) coming from the tail light relay and no ground being provided from the multiplex.