I took delivery of my Lariat about 16 hours ago. Last night while checking out the interior lighting, I noticed that the lower right side of the instrument cluster, where the oil and volt meters are, is dim. Not totally dark, but dimmer than the rest of the guages. The little light it's getting looks to be bleed-over from other gauges. The red pointer needles for those two guages are not lit and I'm sure they should be. Do I have a bad bulb already? I really don't want to take this thing in for service after just one day, but this will nag at me until I get it fixed.

I afraid to let someone pull the instrument cluster on my spankin' new truck just to replace one bulb. Does anyone know how the back of the cluster is accessed? It doesn't look simple.

 

Probably better to hold off on it, try to live with it. You'll almost undoutedly have one or two other little items emerge that need adjusting or fixing. That way, you can combine them all in to one trip to the dealer shop. Most likely, you'd have to remove the instrument assy and insert the bulbs from the rear. Not complicated, but if you don't know how to remove the assy, it could be irritating, and very possible you could break something for lack of knowledge of how it goes together.

 

Do not wait on an item like bulbs... I can just hear the dealer now... "Bulbs go out and they are not covered under warranty". You need to communicate to the dealer that the truck was delivered to you that way ASAP.

Dave

 

Clem, I agree with the previous post, tell your dealer and tell them you'll get it done when something more major needs attention, at least this will get it on the books.

The back of the dash is not easy for the uninitiated, I'm sure I could do it (I just had the curved top off), but I didn't go far enough to see the bulbs. Let the dealer do it.

 

Thanks for the responses, guys.

Even though I'm plenty capable, this does not look like a job for me. I'm sure one or two others things will need attention at some point and I will probably live until then. It's just that I'm not hoping for any trouble.

Perceptron,

After reading your other posts about the door chime, I see that you are our new "in house" dash removal expert. Should I be nervous about the service dept. bozos replacing my light bulb and scratching up/breaking my dash pieces in the process? Somehow I think mine would be the first '04 dash they've had to pull apart. Better yet, I'll swing by your place later and bring some pizza!

 

They won't break anything, more likely to scratch some visible plastic. With a new vehicle, I'm sure they know they'd catch hell if they did, so I'll bet they're mighty careful.

I didn't scratch anything during my "exploration".