Both my trip and milage odometers are too poorly illuminated to read at night. This is particularily annoying on long trips. Since my gas gauge float is bad I need to use the trip odometer to tell when to gas up.

I have already pulled the instrument cluster once and could find no bad bulbs. The rest of the cluster lights up like (orange) daylight. Since it is a bit of a PITA to pull I would like especially to hear from others who can read their'*. I just don't want to find out this is another pecularity of these otherwise great cars.

hmm, i know we don't have the same gages, but im pretty sure most of the bulbs are the same...and i can read ALL my gauges except for a small bit on the top of one gage is a little dim.

Yeah i just went out and put my car in the garage and sure enough, i can see it. Its not bright, but its see able.

Here is my feeble attempt at photographing the problem. Hopefully you can see the faint numbers of the mileage odometer above the fuel gauge. Above them is the trip odometer which is completely invisible.

Can't see mine either, and that'* since it was new. I thought I just had a case of fecalphotia (can't see for crap).

i need a flash light to see mine

Moving to Electrical...

mine is fine

Mine are kind of dim, but readable. I usually grab gas at about 5 AM on the way to owrk and jot down the miles, and I can figure 'em out.

But then again, the way my eyes are going, they could have their own freakin' spotlight on 'em and I'd be squinting.

Ok, so we have one SLE where they are bright and readable. So this was an high end trim feature? I hope not.

My doctor tells me I am in perfect health at 53. However I seem to be accumulating various disorders: CRS (Can't remember Sh--t), fecalphotia (can't see for crap), OldTimers disease (Back in my day we ...........), BBS (Big butt syndrome).

Unless someone steps in and convinces me that the SE instrument cluster was meant to have an unlit odo I am going to have another go at it. I will document my effort and results.

Thanks to all.

On my 92 SE the illumination on the trip odometer was very poor which made it almost impossible to see with the dash lighting. The good news is that the odometer and trip odometer quit working at about 230k so it doesn't matter anymore that I can't read them at night.