[95chryslercirrus]

Well, my interior light dimmer quit working. After a year of it flickering the interior lights when I would use the blinkers, it finally gave out. It's too bright! It hurts my eyes to drive at night since it is on full brightness. Took apart the dimmer switch and found nothing. Cleaned and re-greased the combo switch and internal connections to no avail. What my question is, is there a light dimmer controller that receives resistance through the dimmer switch that in turn dims the lights? Or is it directly wired to the lights through the switch like a potentiometer? I don't wanna drop $200 on a combo switch replacement before checking to see if there is a controller or wiring issue. Any advice? Thanks!!

 

[95chryslercirrus]

I saw this in the J-car section a few days ago and was going to pull the service manual and sorry I forgot. By interior lights, you mean the cluster illumination/VF display lights? Yes, full display brightness can be a real eye-burner at night. The dash illumination incandescent bulbs are grounded all the time and receive a varying '+' voltage from the BCM on an Or/Yl wire. The VF displays (PRND3L and odometer) receives '+' power all the time on a Rd/Vt wire to the cluster and the ground side of the bulbs are dimmed by the cluster circuitry itself depending on a bussed in request on the CCD bus by what the BCM sees from the desired dimmer control setting. Something may still be wrong with the dimmer control inside the headlamp switch. When the Parking or Headlamps are turned on, the 12 volts internally powers one side of the dimmer rheostat. The other side of the dimmer rheostat is grounded to the left cowl area sheetmetal and the variable wiper contact goes to the BCM on a Rd wire. It's like a voltage divider/variable resistor. By varying the control with the Parking lamps on, you should see voltage vary between ~2 to 12 volts if you can back-probe this Rd wire at the switch. If the dimmer has lost its ground and the wiper is staying at 12 volts, I would think that the illumination and VF displays would remain at full brightness whenever the exterior lights are turned on. I could not find any pinout or wiring diagram images on Google to help here and I know how much a picture can be worth a thousand words. Good Luck.

It is all good on the J section thing. You are quite busy on here as it is. Your information is yet again invaluable...

Yes, I mean the interior lights/VF display. My wiper has variable control still, so that means the ground is still good? I had to do a lot of re-soldering on the gauge cluster because the board lands for the tach and fuel gauge had received too much current over such a long period of time and had broken. The fuel light would come on and then drop the gauge to empty and then swing back to full repetitively when I had filled the tank. The tach would quit working all together. I only followed the lines on the tach and fuel gauge to fix this. But before the whole dash removal I did, the lights would flicker when I used my blinker. If I screwed something up on the gauge cluster, would just the gauges be bright and the rest of the car dim since you said they receive from the BCM on seperate wires?

I went out and checked and here is what I got;

Switch Off:
Purple: Open Circuit
White: Ground
Red: Always Ground

Switch On:
Purple: Open, but dims VF display ONLY when lead is applied through meter continuity check to ground, .068 vDC
White: Battery Voltage (13.25 vDC) engine off
Red: Always Ground and also .018 vDC

There was no resistance from ground (rd) to body ground, so all appears good there if red is supposed to be ground. None of the values change when the switch is rotated. I am now confused.

 

[95chryslercirrus]

Do you know if the wire is the same color going out as it is on the dimmer switch? I have been using the back of the combo switch assembly to probe. The wires going out appear to be different colors than any of the wires on the combo switch assembly. I can double check, but I did not see a pure red one. I did see the rd/vl one we discussed earlier for the gauge cluster VR display dimmer however. I would jump 12 volts to red to see if it would dim fully if I wasn't worried about burning up my BCM.

 

[95chryslercirrus]

I discovered something last night while driving. I had my blinker on to turn right and I tried to signal a truck with my brights as a helping hand. Not clicking them on, but just pulling in the arm like you would for the sprayers. The brights do not work this way anymore, you have to click them on. However, it makes the dimmer work. I can dim and everything as long as I am pulling on the bright switch and the blinker is on for turnng right. Anything else and it won't work. Odd?

 

[95chryslercirrus]

I called all of them within 50 miles before closing yesterday. No one has any used Cirrus, Breeze, or Stratus betwee 95 and 2000. There are TONS of them on the road here, they are always easily identifiable with the JA body. Three people sold them in parking lots near my house this summer too, so they are popular. I guess they just aren't getting into the wrecking yard. I am going to try and re-clean the electrical connections in the multiswitch. I am at a loss for a cowl cover vent now too, I woke up this morning and somehow over night a kid's softball got lodged inside it and smashed out the vents. I was easily able to place my hand inside the cowl and pull out the ball. Whoops. I'll post back on the multiswitch repair in a few hours.

 

[95chryslercirrus]

Well I took I apart, cleaned everything, cleaned the connections very well, and put back together. Nothing! In fact, it doesn't dim at all anymore like it did with the brights and the blinker before. I REALLY do not want to spend $150 on an aftermarket switch if I can fix it. Has anyone here had experience fixing these? I do not know what I could be missing. Everything is perfect. Nothing broken, missing, or bent, and the brights are working again. I found that issue. High amount of black on the terminals, from arcing of high current.