Dash lights come on when they want.

Hi everybody, my 05 avalache's lights on the dash wont turn on when they are supposed to. during the day this is no biggie, but when i comes to night driving, it can become tedious since i cant see how fast i am going, and must resort to my iphone light. The weird part is that the lights will go on though, but randomly, like if i change gears or flip on my left/right blinkers, or just outta no where as i am driving. like i said, it does it randomly and there is no sure way to activate the dash lights.

Some more info if it may help, the lights in the rest of the truck work perfectly and will dim and get brighter as i turn the knob next to the steering wheel. My CD changer isnt working as well. it wont eject my disks anymore. but lets focus on the orignal topic of the post. Any help guys?

If I had to guess, the lamps providing backlight are going out. My 05 has them going out all over. One of my steering wheel buttons hasn't worked in the 10 months I've owned it. My RSE had just one out but is now all out. If the sunroof control button has one its out. My 4wd control switch though did what you described.... Sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. Eventually bit the bullet completely. If you think about it... Every lamp in the truck has been on the exact same amount (in theory). One goes, it's a matter of time on the rest.

As far as repair options... Replace the component or if you are up to it, open the component up and replace the lamps. It's not difficult. A soldering iron, some solder, and a 2-pack of lamps from radio shack that costs like $2. There are threads on here about replacing lamps if you use the search function.

The gauge clusters in our trucks are known to be problematic... However I've never read anything on here about backlight being an issue with failures. Usually it's bad gauges or the gear selector not lighting. However someone wiser than myself may pipe up here...

Start out by taking out the cluster and plugging it back in. Might just be a simple loose connection or something. If I am not mistaken the lighting on the cluster is powered directly off a 12 volt connection from the headlight switch and if it is only the cluster that is having issues I would suspect it is likely in the plug.

Has the cluster ever been removed as far as you know?

I have replaced all of the bulbs in mine with LED's and it was reasonably straight forward but I was able to power them to test them through the plug and using a couple clips on the specific leads. So this is why I suspect you have a loose connection.