2003 Sport Trac Electrical Issues - No gauge cluster night light

[jdjr131]

Hi! I'm new to the forums and I have an issue with my 2003 sport trac. I had a slight incident with a pole recently which shattered my driver side headlight. I replaced the headlight housing and my headlights work fine, but I am having some other electrical problems and I cannot figure it out. I no longer have night lights for my gauge cluster: the usual gauge lights work, but once I turn on my headlights I can no longer see the 4x4 and the O/D lights whenever those are enabled, but it seems the other lights, e.g. the check engine light seem to illuminate fine with the headlights on. Additionally, the headlights on warning no longer chimes nor do the headlights flash anymore when closing the truck after locking the car. I checked the fuses (anything listed for cluster or GEM) in the cabin fuse box and I made sure the headlight switch was working properly.

I'm pretty much a novice when it comes to working on cars so I'm not exactly what to look for next. I have tried searching the forums, but I can only find threads related to issues pertaining to the headlight switch or burned bulbs. Perusing the forums I did see that these things may be related to the GEM but I'm not sure how to check that nor what some other possibilities are.

Thank y'all in advance for any help.

 

[jdjr131]

Looking at the similar threads, I want to specify tail lights are NOT out, everything works except for the night illumination behind the dash and the radio/climate controls. So I'm thinking that something was knocked loose or pinched when I hit the pole. Is there a common connection that supplies power or grounds the lights behind the gauge cluster and the radio/climate controls? When I have time I'm going to get behind the gauge cluster and inspect connections. I'll update this thread for whomever runs into this very specific issue.

Also my front turn signal wire was pinched by the damage, so I took that out and put a temporary fix to have that turn signal until I have time to splice in some new wire. Is there any connection in that general area that would lead to the symptoms I'm having?