The D light on my dash won't light up when car is in Drive

[cleandmc]

Hi,

My mechanic had to mess with my instrument cluster on my 89 Legend to fix the speedo cable. When returned to me, the D no longer has the green box light around it when I'm shifted into Drive. All the other ones work (P, R, N, S3, S4, 2). It's quite strange. Any idea what may have happened or how I can fix this? Obviously doesn't effect my driving capability, but I'm a bit OCD and would like to fix it. Doesn't seem to be any easy straight forward light to replace like most of the notification bulbs, etc.

At the same time, one of the backlit green bulbs also went out. The one nearest to the coolant temp portion of the cluster. I pulled a bulb from my parts car and swapped that one in and that now works. So not sure why both the D light and this other green backlit bulb went out after the mechanic messed with the dash? Just a coincidence I suppose?

Thanks,
T.

[l4zy415]

Might want to pull it out again and make sure the bulb isn't damaged.

[paulo57509]

I would first confirm that the plug(s) in the back of the instrument panel are properly plugged in. The connector pins are small and easily bent.

What follows might be BS as my coupe is a 5-speed, but I think the shift quadrant lighting on the automatics is part of the Failure Display (P/N 78230-SG0-A01 - Item No. 26).



My guess is that the bulbs are soldered in and aren't replaceable. The only way to tell is to take the instrument panel out again and look. It's not that hard to do.

If they're soldered in place, it shouldn't be too difficult to find bulbs with wire leads that would work. If you have soldering skills it's should be an easy R&R.

The only thing is you may end up with the replacement bulb being a bit brighter/dimmer because finding the correct wattage bulb might be hit or miss. The way around this is to replace all the quadrant bulbs with new ones.

[cleandmc]

Thanks for the suggestions. Yeah, I definitely checked all the plugs, so nothing loose there. I didn't want to go digging too deep on my running car as I wasn't interested in pulling out the speedo connection and everything, but I suspect you are right, that the lights are soldered in. What I'll probably do is pull my parts car dash completely to figure this all out in terms of the complexity and delicateness of it all and then do my best to carefully sort out a solution on my running car if it seems worth messing with it.

T.

[kraigdankk]

old post but check the side of the selector, will be a black thing with wire push on it and if the d lights up its bad i have the same problem.