I have a 2003 Taurus and have recently begun having problems with the instrument panel lights. It's an intermittent problem and has now happened 3 times over the last 2 weeks. When I turn on mylights, the headlights/taillights work, but the only thing illuminated on the instrument panel are my turn signals - they're both on and steady. Turning off the ignition and restarting several times did nothing.

The first time it happened I drove about 2 miles to a store, the car sat for 15 minutes tops and when I started it again, everything was fine. Didn't notice anything for over a week so I thought it might have had something to do with the fact that my sister was parked near me and had used her remote start shortly before I started my car (Ihave an aftermarket remote start but didn't use it that evening) and some signals got crossed somewhere.

Yesterday morning I was leaving for work and turned my lights on - same thing happened. Exterior lights on but instrument panel only had arrowsilluminated. Itried turning them on and off several times and after about 25 minutes the panel lights came on. This morning same issue. I drove for about 10 minutes with no lights on, then decided to turn them on and see how long it would take for the lights to go on- after turning them on, the panel lights came on abouta minute later (but this didn't happen the first night when I drove to the store though - I drove at least5 minutes).

Any ideas of what might be going on? Of course I'm about 800 miles over my extended warranty now that this has happened but since we had the aftermarket remote start installed, it probably wouldn't have helped.

 

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