Way to dim or turn off dash lights?

I know about hitting the stalk on the left of the instrument cluster, but does anyone know of a way to completely turn off the dash lights regardless of headlights being on/ off or how bright it is outside?

If there's not one, anyone know of a wire or circuit that I could wire a switch into?

I do a lot of night-time hog hunting and best I've come up with so far is to wedge a bunch of rags into the instrument cluster......

 

It's not an issue with the hogs seeing the dash lights, it's having them shine in my eyes. We cruise delta farmland with multiple thousand acre, perfectly flat fields. With NV and thermal scopes, we can see/ detect hogs at over a mile on a good night.

Plan post hunting is to turn them back on. I may be missing something about this question.

 

10-4! Nope, don't want to make it permanent. Of course most prospective used truck buyers usually test drive during the day..........

 

Pull the fuse?

 

I keep mine pretty low, but I thought if I turned the knob all the way to the left they turned off.
I'll check it again tonight..

 

You have adjusted the brightness using the knob in the guage cluster right?

 

Also on my 20 you can turn off the head unit. I believe it is under projection and at the bottom there is a button to turn the screen off.

 

Ok so I just looked, there are two "knobs" one at the speedo side that goes through trip and odo. On the tach side there is a "knob" press it in to adjust your dash brightness its a bar that goes full black for off to full blue for brightest and any brightness in between. On my 20 press Menu on the HU and at the bottom is a display button press it and turn display off, screen will be blacked out but music will still play. Doing that will give you a blacked out interior.

 

I can turn the HU display off on my 19. During the day, the stalk on the left of the cluster will turn dash lights off, but won't go all the way off at night when the truck's little light-sensing brain knows that it is dark outside.

 

Cover the dome sensor in the middle of the dash Idk.

Edit: Nevermind that idea as it would still think it's dark.

I tried mine today at lunch and the dash lights went dim, didn't think about the night aspect

 

I was wrong, the dash lights do not dim down to off.

 

Ditto. Only dim but don’t shit off. Sounds like they fixed this on 2020 models.

 

You could probably cut the ground to the dimmer circuit and put a switch in line. Should kill all your interior dash lights.


Make a little jumper harness to do it without damaging the trucks harness

 

@ncorry
We do the same thing and I know exactly what ambient light can do to you while driving. The easiest solution I came up with and cheapest was to take a large piece of black foam, cut it down to fit perfectly into the dash and then make small cuts with a blade until it fits perfectly into the dash. I also got some multicam black fabric and used wallpaper glue to glue it to the foam, I then cut two holes on the sides of the foam and tied 550 cord through them to use to pull the foam out. It is pitch black. Then when done, grab the 550 loops, pull the foam cutout off the dash and toss it in the back and you are driving normally again.

https://www.rockywoods.com/500-Denier-Mil-Spec-Nylon-Camouflage-Fabric-MultiCam

$23 Case Club Customizable (PE) Polyethylene Foam 18" x 16" x 1.5"

https://www.amazon.com/Case-Club-Cl...s=custom+cut+foam+black&qid=1589276815&sr=8-8

Also, by going this route, you don’t need to deal with wires, fuses or messing with electrical stuff.

 

Don't know how I missed your reply, but thank you!!! You got a pic of the finished product?