5KCS Dash Lites

[Steve Sherman <Steve.Sherman@nsc.com>]

My 87 5KTQW has been exhibiting some weird dash lite behavior
recently...  Whenever I would turn on the headlites (or even go to the
1st click, the parking lites) the Climate Control would go dead.

At least I thought that what was going on.  A bit more playing (and the
car being willing to do this trick more often) has caused me to find out
that the Climate control really isn't dead, it's lites have just all
gone off, but it's still functioning normally.  More playing around has
led me to find that this is all related to the dash lites rheostat.  At
any setting other than full brightness (and even at full brightness
sometimes), the climate control's lites go off.

Before I ripinto the dash, I just wanted to ask the list if there are
any BTDT's out there.  My guess is a bad/loose connection to the climate
control, and/or dirt on the dash lite rheostat.

TIA

Steve