The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Dash lights

Hi Guys, [& gals]:
I’ve been lurking on this site for about 6 months, so I finally decided to register and ask a couple questions. I have a 52 Chevy ½ ton that is in decent condition and all original, other than some real ugly fender mounted turn signals [that are not hooked to anything] and some big west coast style mirrors. I plan to fix it up to make it a decent looking dependable daily driver. Last weekend I got it running, and was able to drive it up and down our lane. So this weekend I put electronic ignition in the distributor and converted to 12volt w/ alt. Finally the questions... Are the dash lights supposed to go off when the brights are on? Also only the speedo lights come on not the other side. Could it be the headlight switch is faulty? Thanks Bob

no the dash lights don't go out unless ya turn'em out, so they must be hooked to the wrong place, unlikely it has anything to do w/ the switch as it's the dimmer controlling hi/lo - for the part lit problem, if you get under there and poke around with a trouble light you should find multiple bulbs/sockets, one or more of which may be loose or burned out

Bill

Hi Bill
I spent all day under the dash [my neck hurts] with a volt/ohm meter there is no power to the sockets on the gauge side, but they look like they are all hooked together with lights on speedo. I didn't think any one had ever messed with the wireing on this truck, or at least it didn't look like it. Thanks Bob

not really familiar w/ the AD setup, but generally all dash lite sockets are wired together, w/ one wire going to the dash lite terminal on the light switch - when you turn the knob the dash lites should brighten and dim - don't see how some could work and not others if the wires and bulbs are good, and certainly couldn't be affected by the headlite dimmer switch - the headlights get power from the switch via the dimmer, so if they work, up and down, nothing wrong there

got a shop manual? here\'s the 48-51 section on the light switch , should be the same

Bill

On my 46, all of the dash lights are wired (stock) to the tail light circuit, so if you have the parking lights or the headlights on, the dash lights come on.

I'm betting that your '52 is supposed to be wired similarly. It kind of sounds like it's jacked into the dimmer switch right now.

Hey Guys
Thanks for the replys. Well.. I didn,t realize there was an indicator light in the dash for the brights, seems that when I was changing all of the dash bulbs to 12volt I inadvertantly put the dimmer light socket into one of the dash light holes. The dash lights weren't working at all! When I pulled the headlight switch out of the dash it was obvious why they weren't working, the dash dimmer portion of the switch was very corroded, once I got it cleaned up everything worked fine! This truck hasn't run in a very long time, so next is the leaking water pump and [I think] stuck float in carb Thanks Bob

Don't feel bad, about 6 months ago we had to explplain to a younger bolt that there was a dimmer switch on the floor. :p

Get a factory manuall for that year great pics of where stuff goes.

Get a factory manuall for that year great pics of where stuff goes.