Hi 

I hope you can help me. My parents are in their 80's, they have had their Ford Focus 2.0 petrol Auto 55reg from new, it has only covered 36,000 miles in the time they have had it.

My mother told me she couldn't see how fast she was going at night as all the gauges would not light up.

I am a retired auto electrician with 43yrs experience, so I carried out the usual basic checks, fuses ok, diagnostic scan no fault codes in any ECU's.

I removed the instrument cluster as its only 2 screws a 5 minute job plug nice and tight no obvious issues. Gauges read as they should no problem with the immobilizer. The car is probably over serviced if anything for the use it gets. Garaged every night etc.

So I booked it into the local Ford dealership they ran their usual checks and couldn't find the fault.

Booked it into a second main dealers same outcome unable to diagnose problem.

Took it to so-called electronics specialist he couldn't resolve the issue.

So I removed the cluster again and sent it to a specialist, I received the dash back re-fitted it and to my surprise we had gauges that lit up.

Left the car idling for ten minutes or so turning the lights on and off a couple of times and then they stopped working again.

Does anyone have a clue as to what the problem is please.

 

 

Around the headlight switch you may have wheel that adjusts the brightness of the speedo just chech to make sure it's not been turned right down by accident.

2 hours ago, BANANAMAN1 said:

So I removed the cluster again and sent it to a specialist, I received the dash back re-fitted it and to my surprise we had gauges that lit up.

Did they repair all the solders?

It sounds like it needs sending back again

Failing that, you will need a new cluster.

Don't bother with brand new as it's worth more than the car.

But, being automatic and full LCD that cluster is rare, I doubt you'll find a good second hand one that spec, so your only hope is to source a cluster from a later MK2.5 and re-program it to your car

I think @gds1972might be on to something. If there is a brightness control it is most likely just a rheostat or potentiometer. A break in the wiring could cause the illumination to dim right down so it might be worth checking around that area. If the control is near the light switch any slight movement of the wiring when turning the lights on and off could have disturbed it.

Just a thought.

2 hours ago, gds1972 said:

Around the headlight switch you may have wheel that adjusts the brightness of the speedo just chech to make sure it's not been turned right down by accident.

This sounds an elegant and easy solution! though if it is, bit embarrassing that so many people missed it LOL I hope the OP comes back to confirm, or deny that was the issue!

@StephenFord I hope it's just that too

I eliminated the thumbwheel straight away by swapping with a neighbours similar model, each worked in each others cars.

Many yeara ago when I had a 2006 Focus I had a similar problem, it turned out it was the ciggy lighter bulb holder had brocken and the wire was running to earth.

If my memory is right the cluster defaults to fully lit when headlamps are off then switches over to the output from the headlamp switch & dimmer dial once the headlights are on. For info it puts out a pwm signal (square wave) to vary the backlight brightness. 
 

So if the cluster isn’t lighting up the the problem lies in the cluster most likely though obviously there’s some other failure mores like the 12v socket bulb holder. That kind of fault I’d expect to affect the illumination of other items like the radio, heater dials etc - the output from the dimmer switch branches out to a lot of different parts of the dash. 

Just a thought to check the plugs into the fuse box/gem ( or BCM) behind the glove box. Just to make sure clean and secure however I would have thought codes would have been stored in the OBD.