The Honda Stepwagon / Stepwgn Owners Club

Morning all. I have a 2001 2.0 Stepwgn (petrol). The four needles do not light up for the speedometer, tacho, fuel and temperature.

However all the back lights light up ok.

Can anyone please tell me whether their needles light up when the car is in use? Surely so.

It would also be very helpful if anyone else has experienced this problem, or has any access to wiring diagrams at all.

A while back I found on a forum somewhere (and now can't find it) a mention that changing the radio can cause a problem like this.

My radio is the one from Japan, although probably after-market, and it works ok. Any ideas would be welcome please. I have checked already from blown fuses. Cheers SteveF

On my 1999 RF2 the needles do not illuminate.

I had to change the radio for a European model (the original only got radio 2) and remove the sat/nav and television.

Other posts in the technical section point the way to dismantling the dash and replacing it and altering the speedo reading method (miles or kilometers).

Cheers Parr, just seen your post. Stangely I am a radio 2 man and only realised today that this is the only station I can get !!

Weird about the needles - surely they can't design them this way. Stevef

Would it be useful to have a circuit diagram for the gauges? I don't have a truewiring diagram, only the current path schematic for the 1998 Steppy.
If you would like it I will try to copy and paste it into a post - it is 3 x A4 pages in large print.

Cheers, I have only just logged on. Yes that would be very helpful and if I find the answer I'll let everyone know.

And if I can do anything for you please ask. Steve from Kent

Hi, Steve,

I'm just waiting for my wife (who is more savvy then I) to stitch the three pages of diagrams into one, then I'll try to get it onto the forum, but I'll also do a direct mail to you.

PARR

I would like to dedicate this post to this really helpful forum.

This is a post for anyone suffering from bad instument illumination on their Stepwagon. Thanks to a wiring diagram by PARR, and a bit of dismantling, I was able to establish that Stepwagon instrument dial are NOT lit from behind by a bulb or light fibre cable.

Instead the dials themselves are 'top lit' by a pair of 2.3 watt bulbs, which work on the lighting circuit. So you can check if the bulbs are working properly by unscrewing the dash surround and lifting it forward a few inches. Remember to look for a screw at each corner, some are under clip out sections of trim, but it's dead easy to do with a little common sense.

When I had replaced BOTH my bulbs, hence the lack of light, I noticed that Honda use a blackened piece of perspex to moderate (severely restrict !) the light output which only has very small areas to allow the light to get through, one photon at a time.

Being inquisitive I took the dash trim right off (to do this lower the steering column and place the column shift lever down to gear 2 so there is adequate space), and then undid the screws for the instrument cluster and carefully unclipped the clear persepx cover.

This allowed me to unclip the front of the cluster from the rear using a flat screw driver to separate the halves. Nothing falls out when you do this. I removed the piece of perspex from the downlighter aperture and cut two slot in it where the bulbs go. If desired you could leave it out entirely, and just put it all back together. To get colour I used a small piece of coloured perspex (cut from a plastic document wallet since it needs something deep in colour and thin) and reassembled. I took to opportunity to dust out the dials as well with a small paint brush.

Hey presto - lovely night time illumination and clean dials. Also anybody with some luminous paint could paint the tips of the dials for a couple of mm so it is possible to see the position of the needles when going through tunnels or in underground car parks etc. This is common practice in the classic car world.

Took me 1 1/2 hours, probably less for anyone else now I have done the ground work.
Happy enhancing, Stevef

Good description - thanks.

For dashboard dismantling, see other posts - two or three give chapter and verse.