MCI dash warning lights

[Lin]

My MC-5a has a group of alert lights in one instrument.  It has things like "Low Oil Pressure", "Low Air Pressure", etc.  There is a little indicator light right in the middle of the cluster that comes on when when the main power switch is turned on.  Other than that though, none of the lights have come on yet.  I would have thought that several like the oil or air pressure lights would come on immediately upon turning the ignition key.  Does anyone know how these are supposed to work.

I have checked the one that says "Lav Emerg", and find that that one is powered all the time.  I was planning on re-tasking that one for my high beams since I do not seem to have a high beam indicator light.

[TomCat]

Got bulbs?

Jay
87 SaftLiner

[Tony LEE]

Based on my MC8 so yours may be different.

Some, but not all those lights have a common earth connection that could be a bit flakey. Other lights will have a 24V feed via the master switch and come on when a switch elswhere grounds the other side of the light.
Yes, the water temperature, oil pressure and not charging lights should come on when the ignition key/master switch is turned on and the low air pressure and low tag pressure should also be on until the pressure gets up.  Park brake on should also illuminate.

A couple of these will flash so the flasher units might be U/S.

The turn indicator and brake lights (on an MC8 anyway), are also on the same panel.

[ChuckMC9]

A few months ago all my tell-tales and gauges went bonkers on me. Erratic, nonsensical behaviour. I knew that many things weren't wrong with the subsystems, so after some time of chasing everything down it turned out that there was a common ground wire from the dash-pod to the panel under the drivers window.

That one wire was mounted into the bottom of the case which houses all the connection points, and that wire's connection to the case was corroded in, around and under the bolt which secured it. Cleaned/sanded mounting area, replaced bolt/nut, and viola! All peachy again.

I found it by measuring & discovering quite a bit of resistance from some of the locations on the back of the gauge panel to ground, then to test the finding, running a ground from a known location to a known location on the gauge-pod and everything started behaving.

[Lin]

Took the advice and checked for ground.  There is definitely a problem there.  I plan to get into the dash next week to change the wiper switches and will try to deal with some wiring then.  Thanks.