I'm going to be as brief and precise as possible explaining my situation. I have done endless searchs into this problem I am having with my 96 civic hatch.

It has an EX cluster, this problem happened about a month ago. I noticed a flickering of the lights on my headunit and my AC controls as well as Cluster everytime the Dimmer Switch adjustment was adjusted somewhere in the middle as opposed to all the way left or right on the dial.

I now do not have any light on my cluster...meaning the backlight that helps illuminate the white markings on the speedometer and rpm etc do not light up...

HOWEVER...the Indicator lights work...such as CEL, SRS, Parking Brake, Turn Signals, High Beams and so on...

AC Controls are lit up as well...and can STILL be adjusted brightness wise via the Dimmer Switch.

I have checked all the fuses underneath the steering wheel...all is well. I have checked all the plugs behind the Cluster and everything seems to be fine there. I checked wiring behind my headunit and everything seems to be okay...I was however advised never to hook up the illumination (Orange) wire to the headunit as the installer of my viper alarm suggested that doing so may have made my dimmer switch go bad...he said hes seen it happen before and hes a Install Tech Manager... (his guess is way better than mine...)

I have bought a spare Dimmer Switch off of ebay and switching it out does not seem to have remedied the issue with getting the cluster backlights to light up again. I thought the issue was the backlight bulbs but upon further inspection they seem to be as good as new...I even swapped in another bulb from another socket to test this with no luck of seeing any light.

At this point I am either contemplating that maybe the second dimmer switch I bought is as faulty as my original one... Will hopefully need to find one that most certainly works to confirm this...

Other than that...I am lost...