jh13

Hello All, New to the forum and just recently purchased a 2006 Malibu LT 3.5L V6. I took the car on a test drive and all was good as were fluids and such, no signs of leaks or other problem issues so I got a good deal on it. I purchased it during the day, last night I took it for a drive down to the convenience store and noticed I had no gauge lighting except for the needle indicator, the PRDNL LCD and the "mph" orange light is on but there isn't any back lighting for the dash gauges, a/c control panel and the console shift selector indicator lights. I checked the fuses to the left side of the console and the cluster lighting fuse is good, checked it with a continuity tester. I was trying the dimmer switch by the way all the while when I was troubleshooting this and noticed it was a bit sloppy so I checked on the price of the switch and it was 20$ so i said What the hell and bought it. Well that didn't help either. My dome lights and such also work but no gauges. What am I looking at doing next to figure this out? Thanks for any help I can get!

mattdez

This may sound weird, but how are your tail lights? Some cars will kill the gauge lights if all of the tail lights are out.

jh13

Thanks, I'll take a look at that. Hadn't really thought about that scenario.

jh13

Ok, checked it out. Bulbs tested fine with tester, but no power for running lights. The park lamp fuse in the rear fuse block was blown. I replaced it and the running lights are working but still no instrument backlighting (and instrument panel fuse for the interior lights is good), then the same fuse blew again, replaced again and it blew again after toggling the headlights on and off. I suppose I have a dead short somewhere. I am going back to the dealer to see if i can get it repaired under the AZ lemon law which says I have 15 days or 500 miles for major repairs, and as far as I see it, the electrical issues are major if I cant drive it at night or the early morning when I need it the running lights the most. I dont want to get a ticket for it so I had to drive my 72 malibu this morning which I love to drive but just sucks the gas like its going out of style.

klutz1

Similar problem w/ 09 Impala just listed under new posts. I didn't check running lights but problem didn't repeat. Suggestion: pull running light bulb and see if fuse blows. Short then is up stream of bulb. Check for recall. I will.

jh13

Well all, the dealer fixed it after threatening to complain to the BBB. It took them about 3 1/2 hours. When the tech was done, he said the malibu had been in an accident because he saw dimpling on the inside of the body near the fuse block (this was not in the carfax report). I was told the park lamp circuit wire on the back of the fuse block was chaffed allowing it to short intermittently. The service manager said they couldn't find it until one the techs had his head in the trunk when they were poking around and saw a flash of light coming from behind the fuse block, after they saw that, they were done in about 20 minutes. I then had beef with the salesman who had showed me a carfax report that didn't say anything about any kind of fender bender when I bought the car. I asked if they would run it again so I could see the report as it came up on their computer screen and it was the same as the one I saw when I bought it. I dont know about carfax now, can it be trusted?, I mean; I made sure that the vin number on the report was the same as mine so their wasn't any funny business going on. No matter though, the salesman apologized to me and now I have a $5000.00 credit for service work if need be in the future (got all this in writing). Now everything works, the dash back-lighting, running lights, everything that had not been working before.

mattdez

I never trust a CarFax report. I bought a used Mitsubishi Eclipse at a Ford dealer about 12 years ago and saw the clean CarFax on it the day I signed the papers. A few months later I brought it in for service at the local Mitsubishi dealer across town and asked for the dealership's service records for the car. Come to find out they did a $7000 repair on the front end of the car after an accident about 2 years before I purchased the car.