gauge cluster electrical connected

[Mkuhn138]

My lights aren't working on my gauge cluster. There is a rather large green electrical connector on the back of it. It accepts a single prong female connector, and what appears to be a 2 prong female connector. I have the single prong connector hooked up and cannot for the life of me fine the two prong connector. Is this what supplies power to the lights? If so, it makes sense why they're not working. If not, WTF? There's nothing else I can see that is not connected...

 

[dyeager535]

Pretty sure you are looking at the VSS buffer, which has nothing to do with lights, sorry.

Lights are run off the single multi-pin connector that snaps into the back of the cluster. Disconnect it (carefully) and inspect the copper contacts on the plastic circuit board of the cluster. If any of the contacts are pulled away from the plastic, and twisted or out of alignment, line them back up and reinstall the plug.

While you have it out, you can trace from a few of the bulbs (early clusters used a couple of 12V feeds as I recall) to see which pins on the cluster connector are the ones that power and ground the bulbs. Check the ground pin(s) on the cluster connector for ground, and the 12V pins for 12V.

The cluster connectors suck, they seem to work ok until someone disconnects it, which results invariably in some of the copper contacts coming loose and eventually leading to malfunctioning cluster components. I will be hard wiring mine eventually.