my dash lights seem dim at night. the brightness control does work. it goes from dim to off. the dash light seems uniform. no bright/dim areas. my car does have autodim rearview mirror but not auto headlights. i think the brightness control works by using a variable resistor? so, the voltage going into the dimmer is higher than the voltage leaving? could i bypass the wires and send full voltage out using a jumper to make the dash go full brightness? anyone got a schematic for the 06 taurus brightness specs? like 12v in and 7v out or so on? or should i just try another light control?
One of the connections to the dimmer may have some resistance in it, either due to corrosion, contaminants or just being loose. The dimmer could also be defective internally. First try unplugging it and cleaning the contacts with alcohol. You can get 91% rubbing alcohol at most stores now.
If that doesn’t work, before replacing the dimmer control, pull the fuse for it and replace it with another fuse the same size. If neither of those solve the problem, then replace the control. I would strongly recommend against jumping the contacts with a piece of wire. The dash lights could become so bright that they will cause night blindness, making it difficult to see the road ahead. Better dim than too bright.
All the recent cars I have had dim the dash lights when you turn the headlights on. It is far more important that you be able to see outside the car at night than inside. One of my few complaints with my 2012 Camry is the large touchscreen on the dash I can’t dim. It does dim somwhat with the headlights but can’t be dimmed further or turned off.
My hood is slightly open today. I was checking some stuff yesterday and did not slam it. But car is locked. I opened hood to look at something this morning and now I see marker lights are blinking? Huh? Is this some security feature? Open hood with doors locked?
This seems to be a common problem. My Trailblazer which is a few years older than your Camry is similar and super annoying. Although you can dim it further, you have to do it manually through the menus. And then that setting applies no matter time of day. So when it’s dim enough for nighttime, it’s not bright enough for daylight use. A real PITA. I often switch to NAV display because that uses inverse color for nighttime and is at least tolerable. To top it off, it can be linked to TOD through GPS and the car has a sunload sensor and dims everything else based on ambient light…
The dimmer control is probably just a variable resistor. That part works by a little pointed-shaped wiper gadget that moves along a fixed resistor (a length of carbonized material) as you twist the control. It’s possible the point on the wiper has corroded a bit, and so the entire circuit now has an unwanted fixed resistance in addition to what you set with the control. That would limit the maximum brightness possible. Sometimes I have this same problem with a radio volume control, and I can usually fix it by squirting the wiper point with some contact cleaner. But sometimes that doesn’t work and then I have to replace the variable resistor with a new one.
There is a pulse width module inside the headlight switch to dim the instrument cluster lights, you may have to replace the headlight switch to correct this.
If you go into the “Display” settings you will find contrast and brightness adjustments.
If it’s done with a pulse width technique on OP’s vehicle, my variable resistor wiper theory above won’t work. There’s two ways to dim a light, either reduce the voltage that powers it, or turn it on and off repeatedly, and really fast so you can’t see it blinking without using special equipment. It will appear to be dimmer that way, the same as if the voltage were reduced, and how dim depends on what % of the time it is on vs off.
I guess you may try to replace that fuse by piggyback another fuse to it which has more output. By this way the light can be more brighter but I haven’t heard anyone done it before. I don’t recommend it as I use common knowledge in electricity and don’t examine other factors.