Dodge Repair: dome lights, dodge ram van, dashboard lights

Question
I have a 91 Dodge Ram van. Lighting wise everything works. The exception is the light switch. When driving at night I have to turn the dash lights completely off to get the dome lights to go off. If I rotate the headlight switch to brighten the dash lights the dome lights come on. It's as if the switch is wired backwards. Turning the know all the way until it clicks should turn the dome lights on and the only way to turn them off is to turn the headlight switch all the way the other direction to dim the dashboard lights and when it clicks again the dome lights go off. I just got this van and need to fix this.

Thanks.

Answer
Hi Jeff,
Unfortunately I don't have a manual for the '91 ram vam but there may indeed be something wrong at the light switch. The problem might be in the headlamp switch itself, but there is likely to be another componnent in a circuit such as this which when it fails causes what you are experiencing. If you can possibly get a wiring diagram, perhaps on line at Autozone.com, then you could examine it and see how complex the circuit is. The category of the circuit would be "courtesy lights" so that would be how to find the circuit you need to look into. Of course there is always the possibility of removing the dome light, or putting in a simple manual switch to turn it off until you neeed it.
Roland