Twilight Sentinel always on

I never really used it before, but I noticed that the car thinks it's dark all the time. If the TS is on, the lights are on, whether it's dark out or not.

This is actually handy right now, because the headlight switch bezel broke and thus I can use the TS on/off in lieu of the normal headlight switch.

I hate to tear the dash apart so before I do that, how do these things normally fail? The sensor according the schematic is just a photodiode, which should be pretty robust. The control module I'm not entirely certain of it's location. The book says it's it on the passenger side (somewhere). Maybe I broke something when I changed out the heater core if it's down in that area.

That Sentinal box is a white plastic box mounted behind that little triangle piece of plastic in front of the passenger door (under the dash)

They are known to fail and "always on" is the default fail safe (better than no lights at all).

Thanks, I wasn't sure what it looked like and that helped me out.

I fixed it. Testing at the module side I was getting nothing from the sensor. So if anyone finds this later, here's some tips.

The sensor is not a photodiode, it's just a regular CdS photocell in a cute blue plastic holder. The big black dome thing is the sun load sensor for the A/C, the headlight one is in the little hole behind it. I never noticed that before, and I thought the domed thing was the headlight sensor.

And that's the key in this case, the sensor is down at the bottom of a hole. The defroster grill was really cruddy, that crud fell in the hole, and the sensor was totally blocked by same crud.

If your lights stay on all the time, try cleaning out that hole with cotton swabs or something similar and see if that helps. If not the defroster grill can be pulled straight up to access the sensor from below. Use caution as the plastic there is exposed to sunlight and can get especially brittle.

question about sentinel, mine only turns on the headlights, not the tail or dash lights. Any ideas? Thanks Again!!!

Looking at the schematics, I would suspect a problem in the module. If you take the cover off the module you'll see two relays inside. One is for the headlights, one for the parking lights. You can try closing them manually by pushing on the contacts to see if the lights come on or not.

Mine stays on all the time too...but only after I tinted the windshield at 38%....worth it in Las Vegas.