Dash Light Issue

[ScottieLuke]

New here, so stick with me. Just purchased a 76 CJ7 . A lot of work had been done to it, but I am left with a few items. First, no dash lights. Tough to drive at night so far. I believe I found the problem. Found an unconnected wire from the light bulb in one of the gauges. My understanding is if there is a break in the circuit, none of the gauges will light? Well, in trying to figure out where the unconnected wire goes, I pulled out the other wire from the bulb terminal. Now my question is this, does that wire somehow reconnect or do I need a new socket thing that the bulb was in that comes with the wires already installed? Once I have the answer to that, I will likely have additional questions about where those wires connect to from the bulb socket thing. I am including pics to try and better explain what the heck I am trying to say.

 

[mriplaybass]

Welcome to the site! Hope you can get back in again. Some newbies have problems logging back in after logging out. Try Tapatalk if your PC won't let you back in.

To your first question. The dash lights are in parallel. What you are referring to would be if the lights were wired in series like a cheap set of Christmas tree lights where if one burns out, the others go out too. You can loose one or more dash lights without affecting the others unless a PO messed with the wiring. There could be a bad wire going to the dash lights, but wherever the break is, all the lights down stream from that point on will not work. Have you checked the dimmer switch? Maybe it's as simple as the switch being turned all the way to the off position. I assume you already checked the fuse.

As to the broken wire, hard to tell, with some sockets you can just push the wire back in, while others you may have broken a plastic retaining tab inside the socket, while other sockets rely on the copper connector to hold it in the socket. If that is broken, it's hard to re-insert the wire. I would just replace it.

 

[Saddle Tramp]

Not to sound like a smarty pants, but no dash lights is why I keep a flashlight handy in my jeep.

 

[mriplaybass]

Not to sound like a smarty pants, but no dash lights is why I keep a flashlight handy in my jeep.

Isn't that the truth!