My car’s dashboard light burned out. The repair garage said they will have to remove dasboard ( about one hour of labor ) to replace it. Is this for real? If I do have to pay for an hour’s labor, I will replace any other bulbs at the same time.
It’s for real. On a lot of vehicles the dash has to be partly disassembled to change the bulbs. I have always said that a lot of engineers that design vehicles never set a foot inside Harvard or Yale. They design vehicles for the people who assemble your cars and trucks and almost never for the driver or the faithful,talented and knowledgeable mechanics who keep these vehicles on the road. Day after day and year after year. I will now step off the soapbox.
If ALL of the dashboard lighting (assuming you mean the lighting in the instrument cluster) then it’s unlikely to be a bulb issue at all.
It would more than likely be a problem with the main lighing switch or rheostat. (dash dimmer if you will)
The rheostat has not been inadvertently rotated to the OFF position has it?
Any complaints about charges to repair something so simple should be directed to the people who manufacture the cars and the rest of the general public who insist on loading down cars with emissions and every bell and whistle under the sun.
It adds complexity and that means money to fix. In the old days a mechanic could lean underneath the dash and change a bulb without tearing the dash apart. No more.
It seems to me that GM should have looked at the way the dashboard was done on the trucks made by Federal back in the 1940’s. One could remove a couple of screws and the instrument cluster would swing down so that the light bulbs could be replace, the gauges serviced, etc.
I also think that the Oldsmobiles around 1957 had one light bulb that was easy to replace and the light was then dispersed to the different gauges through fiber optic cables. If this was feasible back in the 1950’s, it certainly should work today.
I had a 1980 New Yorker about 16 years ago. When I got it, most of the dash lights were out. With the radio removed, I could reach up and change most of the lamps by feel. Maybe if you’re lucky you can do the same.
Thanks Everyone for your replies. Only part of my dashboard area is dark, and I have checked the dimmer. I agree; it should be an easy job to replace a bulb.
BTW, I wasn’t suggesting that this is necessarily easy… I think an hour labor is more than reasonable to replace these. It took me the better part of an hour and I didn’t have to take anything out except the radio.