Today I was driving home from school, and about halfway home, my speedometer dropped to just above the peg and stayed there, even though I was doing about 60 mph, and when I got home I pulled out the gauge cluster and once I reassembled it all, my fuel gauge started acting wierd, now it rises all the way to to the top and stays there, I have no idea what to do, if anyone has a clue whats going, please let me know

 

88,

Welcome Aboard!

Your fuel gauge is an easy one. As you probably suspected, there is a connection problem somewhere in the cluster attachment. The gauge is not reading the resistance of the level sensor in the tank, so it displays "FULL".

As for the speedometer, the speedo head is driven by a small tachogenerator attachec to the transmission, the VSS (Vehicle Speed Sensor). The VSS also sends road speed data to the ECM, and if the ECM does not receive these signals, it will store an error code and light the SERVICE ENGINE lamp on the instrument cluster. If there is no lamp, it is likely you have another connection problem with the speedo head or the speedo has mechanically failed.

For both problems, the cluster may have to be removed again, or at least for the fuel gauge.

 

I thought 88's still had a mechanical speedo? if thats the case then broken cable or snapped driven gear shaft probably

 

Yeah, I figured a bad connection somewhere for the fuel guage, but what gets me is that it ONLY happened after I tried disconnecting the speedo cable from the back of the cluster, so maybe I broke a connection somewhere? I'm getting onto the whole speedo problem this weekend, the cable needed lubrication anyway, I was eventually going to replace it, but I've been too busy to deal with it because of replacing a crap load of sensors in the car, and, the car being my daily driver, I cant go replacing the cables during the week, so I'm gonna have to tough it out till the weekend (at least if I get pulled over I get an excuse) Thanks for the help, I appreciate it.