Rep Power: 0

I hooked up a cd player in my 04 civic the other day and now the instrument panel wont light up. Ive searched everywhere for a blown fuse or bulb but cant find one. The wierd thing is that all the gauges work, and my cd player works fine, ,but the instrument panel stays dark when i turn the headlights on. Any ideas on what this might be?
Thanks
Mike (the new guy)

 
Rep Power: 306

The problem may be easily found. If your stereo has an illumination wire, look at the adapter harness that plugged into the stock harness. The wire you should have hooked up to on the Honda side is RED/BLK. The red wire should be taped up and never used to connect to a stereo.

The red wire is the dimmer control wire, which dims the lights. If you connected the stereo to this wire, the first time you turned on your lights, the dimmer control wire was sent to the stereos illumination switch. Most stereos do not dim, but rather have a transister which adjusts the lighting on the stereo. The problem is that this wire sends the wrong signal back and blows the dash clusters dimmer control circuit up.

If you did not hook up to the red wire, let me know, I can help troubleshoot it further. If you did, I am sorry, you will most likely need a new dash cluster. If the car is still under warranty and relatively stock, put the oem radio back in, hopefully you did not cut anything, and have Honda replace it.

 
Rep Power: 811

Yeah, check all fuses inside car and under the hood. If they're all good, you're screwed. I've been hearing that the dash lights don't have any kind of fuse or protection. Just put the stock deck back and take it in for warranty work.

 
Rep Power: 306

The dash lights, i.e. the red/blk wire are protected by a fuse (fuse 2, underhood relay box, 15amp). The dimmer control wire is NOT. You ground this wire out, and it will melt the traces on the dash and you lose the lights on the cluster.

But first, check your radio install and verify what wire the illumination is connected to.

 
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So what happend. Were you able to fix it? Just wondering if the wire did get grounded would that mean a new cluster too?

 
Rep Power: 811

Good thing I don't use any of the stock lighting anymore. That's a bad thing if one little short could kill all the lights.

 
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Thank god the EP's are not wired like this. My orange line got pinched and grounded out. With the SI they do fuse this line with the small bulbs above the headlights. Thank god I had a multi-meter to check all my fuses.

 
Rep Power: 328

I never even hook up the dimmer wire on the HU. Never had a problem yet.

 
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I did the same the wire was cut and caped at the end but in the middle it got cut by some metal and shorted it.

 
Rep Power: 265

Ok so what exactly is broken, i want to order only what is broken and blown not the whole cluster. I plan to install it myself, I got the service manual and 3yrs. shop experience...can anyone help?

 
Rep Power: 811

you need a new cluster. Basically the circuit board is fried, and you can't buy single parts of the cluster only the whole thing.

 
Rep Power: 308

www.car-part.com is a good source for used parts.

 
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Ok so the instrument cluster was fried, so me and my friend took all the light bulbs out, soughtered (sp) wires to all of them, then wired up a switch to the lights, and voila, works again. kinda ghetto rigged but better than buying a whole new cluster. The only disadvantage is no dimmer, its either on or off. I was a little sketchy about doing this at first, but its been almost a year now and ive had no problem. You just have to make sure your wires dont touch the metal on the back of the cluster, ,you WILL set your car on fire.
Mike

 
Rep Power: 265

not a bad idea, gotta do what you gotta do, thanks a lot man, really helped me out cuz now i have a back-up

 
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same happened to me...what happen is, like mentioned above, the traces overheated and burned...aside from that, the transistor controling the lights is gone too. you can have this easily repaired at an electronics repair shop if u want...what they'll do is make jumper cables from the I.C. to each corresponding location, and replace the transistor.

We did it here at work, I got the transistor from Gearbox from his old cluster.

 
Rep Power: 265

so how do i go about doing that, cuz there is no way im getting a new dash

 
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Thats odd on my old HU i used the dimmer wire and taped off the illumination wire and had no problems and now im using the illumination wire just for the hell of it on my new cd player

 
Rep Power: 265

anyone got any spare parts?