Ok, please see if you can diagnos this very strange gauge/light problem I have or tell me where to start looking.

Here's what happens:

Headlights turned OFF, everything works fine, all guages are cool.

Turn the headlights ON, and it gets all weird. When I pull the headlight switch on, the right 3 gauges go dead: tach, battery, and oil pressure (right? ...anyway, the 3 right most ones). The speedo and others on left side work fine.

Also, along with the gauges going dead, the dash light on the right side (behind the dead gauges) goes out as well as another dash light over by the AC/Heater controls. But the light behind the remaining working gauges is normal.

There's more. When I switch on a turn signal, the 3 dead gauges will flutter in sync with the turn signal (they will kinda jump up a centimeter or so in conjunction with the turn signal blinking)

And lastly. If I rotate the headlight *** (the dash light dimmer) while the lights are on and the gauges therefore dead, the lights will go in and out - flash on/off, on/off , etc. - as I rotate through the range of motion/dimness. And of course the gauges jump alive while this happens everythime the lights go out and then are dead again as soon as I turn the *** a little further and the lights come back on.

Any ideas on what would cause this and how I can fix it, its quite annoying and looks damn ridiculous?

I am not an electronics person and so don't know how I would fix it unless I got my Dad's help who is an electronics whiz. I wouldnt mind taking it to someone and paying them to fix it for me if I knew it would be a modest fee, but I am afraid they either will not be able to figure it out and/or will charge me a large amount of cash due to the time.


Any ideas/help?

Thanks guys.

 

i had the same prob with my iroc it was in my tach temp fuel and volt guages i worked on it for a week and all it was is the electronic board on the back of the cluster had a small brek in the power side you have to look real close or you will miss it but i think it will fix youre prob let me no dont by a new cluster just put in a jumoer wire.

 

Don't use a jump wire, that will only cause more problems down the road. Those circuit boards are not made to use jump wires. Go to the junk yard and find a new one. You can pick one up for about 20 -30 at the junk yard.

 

If that is it, how hard/easy is it to get to? Just start taking things off?

Also, any other ideas of what it might be?

Thanks guys.

 

Ok, I finally got the whole gauge mount out and the gauges off.

However, now how the heck do I know whats wrong? I don't really know what I'm doing here.... I got everthing out but I don't know what I am looking for and if I find it, how to fix it.

Any ideas or help would be great, now that I have a car with nothin in the dash...

Thanks.

 

you want have to take all the guages out just take the cluster out of the dash on the back where the wire harnes plugs in look at the electronic board for a break 9if you have ever taken apart a radio or anything like that it looks almost like that board but its covered with plastic and not cilicone) but you will want to look for a break in the wires of the board you may have to pull some of the lights out to find it. you may also want to put an ohm meter on it to check for flow i hope this helps if not i will keep checking back if you use yahoo my name is bowtie4ever1986 you can catch me there time to time

 

Ok, I talked to my Dad and he told me it was very unlikely for a connection to fail on a printed circuit board like that. He said it was probably the connection somewhere, but not the board itself.

I did play around with the ohm meter and everything I think was ok, also just looking at it, everything looked good. No obvious breaks anywhere to be seen with the eye.

I cleaned the contact points like he told me to, and then went back to the car to clean the contacts on the connector there.

Put it back in and no good. But this time I decided to play with it while the battery was connected to see if I could figure anything out.

Well it is definitely somewhere on the right side of the circuit/connection. By playing around and putting different amounts of pressure on the board (pressing into the contacts) and on either the right or left side, I could make the lights dimmer and such. But the right side of it is just not making a connection.

I guess I need to get a new board and try that. However, if I get another one, doesn't it need to be from an Iroc with a 145mph speedo as well, as in doesnt it have to be from the same exact kind of car? Or do they all have the same generic circuit?

And I don't do junk yards so I dont know how the hell I am going to get around to trying to go and find one and do that myself....

 

it dont have to be from an iroc just one with a 145 speedo you might want to try checking the harnes with a meter to make shure you havent lost a ground or possibly a + wire you may just have a broken wire if you pull the cover off the bottom of the dash just under the steering wheel there are about 3 or 4 ground wires atached to the dash make sure they are connected good wiring probs can drive you crazy just be dont get mad you will find it also on the salvage yard side most yards will pull it for you if you tell them what you need make sure they give you ond for cable speedo and not electronic

 

Put your pride aside and go be a junk yard commando.

 

I had the exact same problems.
Check the connectors of the curcit board. Where your gauge cluster connects with the two connectors in the dash.
What had happened was the brass curcits got unglued and criss crossed with some other curcits. When ever I turned on my head lights the gauge cluster went hay wire.
Make sure they cant be peeled back form the plastic curcit board. If they can then its more than likely that they are getting messed up when you insert them into the dash conectors.
I superglued mine back down to the plastic circuit board.

 

Any more suggestions gents? I am about to embark on this journey and could use as much advice as possible.

 

Well, I bought a new cluster off eBay and tried putting that in, that didn't help.

So if its not the board itself, what do I do now? How do I track it down?

 

man i have the exact same problem as you!

of coarse it should not be the board itself if it works fine with the headlights off.

my headlights off, and mine works fine, with my headlights on, only one lightbulb turns on at the bottom right, only speedo works (cable driven) and no gauges work and both blinker lights stay lit.

it all worked fine until i ripped apart my dash to isntall my speedo cable.

i prolly jiggled something loose but i dont know where to start, theirs soo much crap down their

 

same problem with mine anyone got any help?