My oil and battery light don’t illuminate when I turn the key on before I start the engine. The parking brake,SRS, SES, and all the others seem to come on? I want to make sure they are working correctly. I planned on pulling the cluster and seeing if it’s just the bulbs if they are all supposed to be on.

 

Your battery and oil light as well as check engine light should all come on with the key in the acc. Spot. This is called a bulb check. It’s possible it’s just a bulb. These cars are over 10 years old. I would start by checking them first.

 

So it looks like the “battery” light was just the bulb, but I swapped the oil light with a known working one and it still doesn’t illuminate? I’m pretty handy but not on something like a circuit board...

 

I should add I haven’t done any wiring in the car/dash. I did relocate the battery to the trunk but nothing really inside car. Although Idk how long the oil light has been out. I have an oil pressure gauge and check that. I noticed my cig lighter/ring/ash tray lights were out and then I noticed the oil and battery, although I feel like it’s unrelated? The cig lighter is bad but the lights were a bad fuse.

 

Well I found the wiring diagram and it seems the pin out is a ground trigger. I checked the wiring from the sensor to the cluster and it’s good. Could it be the cluster itself? I don’t want to buy another one to troubleshoot, idk what else to do?

 

Any wiring or cluster gurus in here...?

 

to rule out an upstream wiring problem you can check the harness connector for the cluster. The connector C-01 Pin 18 (white wire)** should send ground with the engine not running. You can test this by unplugging the cluster and using a digital multimeter in continuity mode (beep test). Take one probe and find a good spot to chassis ground it, take the other probe and touch pin 18 in the harness. You should get a beep.


** I am using a 2003 Evo FSM, if you have a different year it might be a good idea to check to make sure it isn't different.

 

Here’s an update, I pulled the connector off the ops on the back of the block and grounded that wire. The oil light on the cluster immediately lit up. So I know the wiring from the clip to the cluster is good, bad oil pressure sensor? I thought they default to “on” when they go bad?

 

could just be disconnected, or there is a break somewhere.

 

I grounded the connector directly off the oil pressure sensor and the light came on, that tells me the wiring is good all the way through

 

Sorry I missed that, yah looks like your switch is bad then.