instrument lights on when park/headlights are off?!?!?

[3rdgen4cheap]

First off, i am a newbie to this place. i just got an 86 accord lxi last week for $900 and it runs great, all except for my little problem, the instrument lights are lit all the time when the ignition is on and when the park/headlights are off. And when i turn the park/headlights on, the instrument lights go out. when all the instrument lights are on with the key on, i notice that only one light is out, the one that lights up the icon on the instrument lights brightness control. Im kinda thinking it might be the control module for the brightness control, but im not quite sure. I havent done any electrical testing yet, but i was just curious if anyone else has ever experienced this odd occurrence, and what the fix was. BTW, the other night my friend had pointed out that my parking lights were on very dimly when the actual park/headlight switch was off (possible backfeed from somewhere). Thanx in advance for any future help.

[oldguy]

I had kind of a similar situation with my dome light. With the car off and all of the doors closed, the dome light was on dimly if in the center position. The driver's door ajar indicator was always on. Ended up being a short in the courtesy light on the driver's door. That was fairly easy to track down, the dash told me which door was causing the problem. I would guess you have a short somewhere between the column combination switch and the controller. No way to tell without doing the tests. In case you haven't noticed yet, there is a link to the full shop manual in .pdf format posted here (http://www.pauldesign.ru/honda/shopmanual.html)

[Blkblurr]

My guess would be you have several ground wires that came loose from their ground stud and allowing a backfeed of voltage across the grounds. My clue is the half brightness of your parking lights.