'95 850T

When I start the car, the instrument panel light comes on for about one second -- so I know that the bulb is OK -- but then it goes out and stays out ... until I start the car again. I don't know much about electrics but I know that intermittent faults are notoriously hard to diagnose. Could this be a capacitor or some such thing? Any suggestions as to how to test and/or where to look?

Thanks in advance.

It's not unusual for a 850 instrument light rheostat to go bad after so many years. I think it's a pretty common failure.

I grabbed 2 or 3 from the pick-n-pull a few years ago. Fortunately 2 of them were good and solved my intermittent instrument cluster lighting problem. It's a very easy replacement.

Here's the inside of the Rube Goldberg designed 850 dimmer switch...
(I apologize for the huge photo)

Thanks again for your diagnosis; you were exactly right! I finally got tired enough of not being able to see the speedometer (and other things) that I took it in to get fixed. The part was 'only' 189 euros plus 79 euros (fixed) for a minimum one-hour labour -- even though it only took about five minutes to do the job -- for a total of 268. But at least now we can see.

Next thing is getting the little plastic gear(s) in the odometer replaced.

cheers,

Henry

That's quite expensive.

Changing out the broken odometer gear ($10US), takes a bit longer. Because you have a 1995, you can get the actual mileage from the A-7 port of the diagnostics switch. Then spin the odometer to the correct KMs before putting the instrument cluster back in the car. Also a good time to replace the 4 larger bulbs.

Klaus
--
Keeping it running is better than buying new

Thanks for your message. I'll check it out.