Accessory and radio light replacement

[griffiph]

May have already been covered, but how hard is it to replace bulbs in 98 Suburban dash?

 

[Brandon Schnautz]

You tilt the steering wheel all the way down, e brake on, put it in 1st gear (if automatic trans), extend the cupholder out, pull dash bezel out CAREFULLY (it's just clipped it but clips are old a brittle), disconnect the wires going to the middle part of the bezel ie cargo light and or passenger air bag switch, unclip the headlight switch assembly from the bottom left of the bezel, entire bezel should be free from the dash at this point, 4 tiny screws hold the instrument cluster in the dash on the left and right side, once screws are removed the cluster pulls right out and all the bulbs are accessible on the back of the cluster in twist lock plastic retainers (theres a couple different size bulbs in the cluster so dont just buy a bunch of 194's. While the bezel is off you can replace the bulbs in the climate controls (radio as well but that requires special bulbs and disassembly of the radio and de-soldering of old bulbs and soldering of new ones). The white (by now probably yellow) plastic body of the climate controls is EXTREMELY BRITTLE and will most likely brake if you try to remove it so I reccomend taking the radio out and reaching behind the climate controls to access the bulbs.... good luck

 

[98chevy2500SS]

The radio lights will need to be soldered in AFAIK.

The cluster lights are different, as @Brandon Schnautz said. The 6 large ones that are to light up the speedo and tach are 194s if you go LED. If you want to replace incandescent with incandescent, the left six I think are 168 (tach/speedo/odo) and the right are 194 (battery/temp/fuel/oil pressure). The other bigger sockets are 168s (seat belt light and DRL light). The small sockets behind the cluster, I believe, are 74 bulbs. There was a thread here somewhere about this, can't remember where.

 

[98chevy2500SS]

Here's that thread I was talking about: https://www.gmt400.com/threads/1995-99-gmt400-gauge-cluster-bulb-sizes.43218/

Really good information here. They are 161s, I thought they were 168s, my bad.