Michaelm

Sounds like a bad ground either at the instrument cluster or at the headlight return circuit. Bad grounds cause odd things to happen. Is your battery minus connected to the chassis? Is the engine connected to the chassis ground? Is your Xenon controller connected to a good chassis ground?

Measure the voltage from the Xenon controller ground to the battery minus. It should be less than a half volt or so.

Try disconnecting the controller to see if maybe it really isn't the problem.

Good Luck!

The local Lexus dealer took 4 days (!) to diagnose this issue. What they have come back with is that it is the spiral cable (sometimes referred to as the clock spring). Oh, and they want $1000.00 to do the repair. To me this seems like a huge amount of money to repair dash lights. Does anyone have any experience with issues caused by the spiral cable and/or its replacement?

Thanks.

Ok here is the breif synopsis of events.

1. When you start the car, the instrument cluster lights are all on.

2. When you toggle the Headlamp s/w to Main beam low, ( The cluster light go out , pitch dark)

3. When you toggle it back to off position, now here only the daytime lights are running. The cluster lights are back on.

4. Checked the Dimmer s/w absolutely fine on dimmer and full bright mode . Here got the toggle s/w to High /low beam mode and used the dimmer, no luck.

5. Check the fuse box and ran a test to all the leads to the instrument cluster. all ok.

I am out of ideas ....

I had a similar problem on my LS400 - 94 models as there was this instrument cluster would flicker and then go out. There was this guy JIM from Fresno who fixed it. Most of the 94 model had this problem, it would used to happen at the early morning start and until the IC would get warm,then the instrument cluster would come up, and sometime intermittent flicker used to happen during the ride. IT was bit annoying as the you could not see a damm thing whether be it the speed or the fuel guage. This guy did a wonderful job of fixing it. This has lasted till date. I had fixed it just as the lick ran out on the warranty and today i have covered over 223000 miles, it is just perfect.

One thing for sure I could make out is the speedo / fuel / temp RPM guage are running fine on the GX while the lights are out.

These are the same steps I took with my 02 ES300, with the same results. I am taking it in tomorrow to have it looked at and will let you know what they tell me.

Last evening On drive back home while getting the Headlamp lights on, the Instrument cluster lights does not get illuminated, but when you put if off, the instrument light panel come on, strange !!! Any ideas... suggestion...welcome

This is interesting because I had this happen to my 2002 ES300 last night as well. On my car the radio, climate control, and gear indicator lights near the shifter all go out when I turn on my headlights. So far I haven't been able to figure anything out, and I will probably take my car in next week since (as you well know) I cannot see anything at night.

Have you turned the dimmer switch to compensate>?

Yes, I did check the dimmer control and even removed it and measured the resistance. The dimmer control works fine when the headlights are off. I also checked all of the fuses, both behind the coin holder and under the hood, and found that they are all fine.

I did notice that not only the instrument panel lights and needles go out when I turn on the headlights, but also all of the radio and climate control lights. A few of the indicator lamps actually do light when I turn on the headlights including the headlight indicator, door open, check engine, and oil. The gear indicator also lights on the instrument cluster but is dim, however the gear indicators near the shift lever are all dark. I will probably take it in next week to have it checked out since I cannot see a thing at night.

My 2002 ES300 instrument cluster goes completely dark when the Xenon headlights are turned on. This includes all backlights, indicator lights (like turn signals, etc), and needle gauge lights. During the day when the headlights are either manually turned off, or if left on "auto" so the daytime driving lights are on, all of the cluster lights work fine. Has anyone else experienced this? Any suggestions? Thanks.