Ok so I bought a used f150 xlt screw, during the test drive i couldn't see the guages very well and told the dealer about it. They put a towel over the light sensor on the dash and a few seconds later the cluster lit up. I told them it should always be lit up but they disagreed with me and that was pretty much that. So I'm wondering does everyone have to keep something covering it so they can see their gauges or am I the only one. And does anyone know if I can fix this?

 

Try turning up the brightness left side of steering column. Push the right side to increase brightness. Try that with headlights on, may be that the previous owner liked it dark when night driving.

 

Yeah I tried that at the dealership, even went through the owners manual to see if anything about it was in there. I also looked on the fuse panel to see if their maybe some fuse associated with it. I'm pretty savvy when I come to this kinda stuff but this one's got me stumped.