Help needed on panel lights

[spyzee]

Any quick answers on this one. I took my car out in the dark for the first time and all panel lights were lit up except for speedo & rev counter where the bulb holders had obviously got dislodged, probably by me when I was reconnecting the steering column after changing the oil filter.

So I got my hands up behind the speedo, found the bulb and pushed it back in. Did the same with the Rev counter but the act of just pushing it home caused all the panel lights and speedo to go out. Fuse looks ok so I am assuming that all bulbs are wired together and I've broken the connection somehow. Rev counter still works. Any quick way outs chaps?

Mr muppet,

[Frank Howard]

The instrument lights get their power via a red/white wire. Most get ground when they are attached to the metal canisters of the gauges, but some have a seperate black ground wire. If all of them went out, you must have a bad connection somewhere in the red/white wire. With the instrument lights powered up, have a friend look at them (in the dark) while you go under the dash with a torch and wiggle all of the red/white wires. He'll let you know when you find the bad connection.

As an alternative, you could have lost your ground as all of the instruments are connected to ground via a series of black wires. Try a jumper wire from ground to an instrument that will not light. If it does, the rest will probably light up as well. Now you know that the ground connection to the instruments is bad. Good luck.