Community Forums

LSC9901 · 11-10-2015, 05:09 PM

Currently I have no dash lights. All the other lights appear to be working .... as best I can tell. I contacted Fleetwood and was sent some schematics but they don't seem to even come close to what I have lurking under the gauges. I have checked all the fuses and they seem to be OK.

Should I be looking somewhere other than under the dash? I haven't yet checked to see if there is power to the switch but since the headlights are working I would guess that there is power there

HELP !!!! Ideas, thoughts .... anyone with an '01 Bpunder ?

Gocoffeer · 11-11-2015, 06:00 AM

I think many of us including both my Bounders had the infamous dash light issue. On my easy to fix issue I discovered a completely corroded ground and it was not passing enough voltage. I ran a ground jumper thru firewall to the dash panel ground common area under dash and it resolved all kinds of jumpy gauge issues.
How I troubleshoot that issue was with ohmmeter... I measured voltage from ground to fuse....the reading I was getting was under 11 volts....and you need more than that to run the gauges properly.

LSC9901 · 11-11-2015, 07:18 AM

Part of my possible problem is that I don't even know which fuse is the dash lights fuse. I guess I have to contact Ford which makes no sense to me. When they ship it is just a chassis with no lights. How will they be able to identify the fuse block ?

LSC9901 · 11-11-2015, 01:16 PM

Problem resolved. It was a ground issue but still a little strange. I recently installed a rear view camera and connected the ground for that to a previously capped off ground wire. Camera works fine. Disconnected the camera ground and dash lights are fine. Figure that one out !!!

Gocoffeer · 11-12-2015, 06:10 AM

I will answer that concern for you as to lower the mystery and allow you to fix that issue. The BAD ground to that same common exists. You have not fixed the issue and only discovered the area of problem. To fix that issue you must do as I have done in the past.
1. Run a new ground wire to that common OR
2. Find the corroded side of the bad ground wire and clean it up

What you have discovered is that there is a limited voltage available at that bad common and when you added a new electrical device tot he common you OVER DREW the voltage there. As in Star Trek...you need MORE POWER CAPTN....More POWER...

LSC9901 · 11-12-2015, 01:06 PM

At this point I will be playing it by ear. Before I made the camera ground connection everything was trouble free. Now that it is disconnected from that particular ground connection ..... all is fine. Until I have an issue I will leave well enough alone.

Gocoffeer · 11-14-2015, 04:18 PM

I can understand that...today I was doing my winterization. I go over the rig as good as possible. I found that my special made terminal block for my solar grounds were getting funky. I pulled that apart and did the dielectric grease thing again after cleaning up the copper .... I looked under the dash too.... all was good there. On my older Bounders I try to note on my maintenance record sheet where ground points are found so I can revisit them on my yearly inspection and keep them clean. I do believe it saves me a ton of issue when I need to add electrical goodies to the system.