'68 electrical bugs & getting the cluster bezel off

[dardal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Your reverse light problem is strange.  I have no clue.  Your thooughs on the 
interior lights are also sound.  Its unlilely all 4 ground switches in the 
doors are bad.  I have never encountered this problem eiher.  As for your dash 
lights, you are right to chace the problem on the rheostat.  If turning the 
thumb wheel many-many-many times does not fix the problem, you may want to go 
inside and by-pass the rheostat completely.

As a side note, you may not be famiar with the following.  In the 68's (and 
probably 67's) if you turn the thumb wheel all the way to one side, you get all 
interior lights on, even if the doors are all shut.

Happy troubleshooting.  

D^2, 68 LeBaron (all interior lights working), 68 Sedan (dash lights not 
working for a long time due to rheostat, but installed some exterior "ugly" 
lights that illuminate the dash at night [too lazy to fix it right])

Quoting jason reizner <jreizner_lists@xxxxxxxxx>:

> after going through my new '68 hardtop, i've found a
> couple of electrical glitches, and was wondering if
> anything sounded familiar to anyone before i devoted a
> weekend to tracing shorts.  i haven't had a chance to
> get my hands on a factory manual yet, so i'm working
> off the electrical diagrams for the '67 off the
> website.  from what i've seen, most of the diagrams
> have jived with what's in the '68 so far, but gimme a
> holler if there's anything i should look out for.
> 
> well, starting from the back and working forward:
> 
> the car has no reverse lights. i crawled under the
> bumper to find the connectors for both of them were
> unhooked.  easy enough i thought, until i plugged them
> in and found that my gauges stopped working and the
> turns signals wouldn't light up.  i unhooked the
> connectors, and everything was back to normal.  all of
> the other exterior lighting works fine.
> 
> none of the interior lights [either in the c-pillar or
> the front doors] come on when any of the doors are
> opened.  i'd be inclined to think it's a power problem
> and not a ground problem as the jamb switches look
> alright, and the manual switch in the back right door
> does nothing.  also, the map light over the ignition
> is dead.
> 
> finally, the dash doesn't light up anywhere.  there's
> juice on both sides of the fuse, and all the head &
> tail lights work, so i'm looking at the rheostat in
> the dash.  the only problem is that i took all the
> screws out holding in the bezel, but the bezel keeps
> getting hung up on the column by these two little
> prong things at the bottom of the arch where the
> column passes under, and refuses to budge.  is there a
> trick to getting this puppy out?
> 
> thanks everyone,
> jason reizner
> chicago
> 
> 68 imperial crown
> 90 grand wagoneer
> 85 grand wagoneer
> 83 wagoneer limited
> 87 xj6 sIII 4.2
> 
> 
> 
> 
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