I had the Iroc out on Saturday for a cruise, and after driving around for probably 30 min or more, the tachometer froze in place, right at 1400 rpms. Also, the oil pressure gauge and voltmeter dropped to 0. The driveability of the car didn't/hasn't changed in the slightest, but every gauge on the right side of the cluster just stopped working. Any idea what this could be? Thanks.

 

Short or open in the cluster. Sounds like Too Much Fun to me.

 

Yep, every time I get her back on the road, something else breaks .

Ah well, I was planning on taking the gauge apart over the summer and re-doing all the backlighting in a nice blue color, guess it's just going to be done a little ahead of schedule.

Anything else it could be?

EDIT: I'm envious of your TTA by the way, beautiful cars. I have a spare '91 Camaro shell that's just begging for a 3.8T swap

 

I know the feeling. If it isn't one thing, it's something else. Brakes got fixed, then the exhaust I hacked up is acting up (duh, I touched it - that's why it broke!) and then a lightbulb in the dash goes out, and I know how fun those can be.

There's the very remote possibility that all three gauges broke at the same time, that or their sending units went out at the same time, but I think you should look at the wiring harness connectors where it connects into the gauge cluster circuitry first. Could be some crud got in there and shorted out a few things. Do all the indicator lights still light up, too?

If I had saved the pictures of it, I could show you what I'm talkng about, as I have done some fiddling around with dashboards on F-bodies before. This is just some of the junk I pulled out of a beater Camaro once, in an attempt to fix up a Firebird. Don't try this at home.

 

Speaking of TTA's, I went from this...

 

To this. Good riddens, accursed beater 2.8 Firebird!!

 

Check the gauges fuse. Same thing happened to my friends '87 IROC and it was just the fuse.

 

Hey, there's a fuse? I didn't know that, for real... Wow, I learn something every day.

 

It had occured to me, but the speedometer, temperature, and fuel gauges are all in working order ....wouldn't that be on the same fuse?

Easy way to tell I guess, drive over to the garage tomorrow and swap fuses. Man that'd be nice to have an easy fix!

 

i dont kno if this is normal or not, but after i drive my bird for a while n shut it off and then turn the key back to run (with out starting it) the oil pressure gauge goes to 0 but then it will move a little bit, like out of the red area, then back to 0 -- what could cause this if it is a problem

 

I have very little experience with how the instrumentation on our cars work (though I'll be finding out now haha). But my guess would be, if our gauges are mechanically driven, and oil is settling back into the pan after the engine is shut off, that flow could be enough to register on the sending unit, and with the key in "ON" the gauge would show that.

 

thats what i thought in the back of my head, but after 10 seconds i think the oil shouldnt have any pressure left in it, as all it should do after 10 seconds is begin to drain back into the pan

 

as for the oil pressure gauge, i kno that the gauge just works based upon polarity. when the sensor grounds out the gauge, the needle moves to the right (indicating pressure) but when it reverses the polarity it moves the needle to the left (indicating loss of pressure) so maybe my gauge is grounding out, or it is as you thought, oil just returing to pan, because i have no problems with the gauge when the car is running.

 

Well, the dead instruments are due to the fuse (thankfully). However, putting a new 10amp fuse in just causes it to pop as soon as the power is turned on. I tried a 15 just to make sure I still had oil pressure, because I had to drive the car, and that lasted maybe 10 seconds, but all gauges read normal for that period. So its an easy gauge cluster fix, but there's a short or something elsewhere on the car. When I drove it, I noticed that it would try to stall below 1200 rpms once the engine was warm, if I pulled off the road and shut it off until cold, it would run normally again until it got up to operating temperature, then the problem repeated. The car also threw codes 24 and 54 at that time, so I checked the ECM connections (all fine). Next I plan to check the oil pressure connections and fuel pump relay. Anything else it could be? The car still runs fine if you keep the revs up, which makes me think its NOT the fuel pump, because I'd expect the reverse to be true, ie run at slow RPMs, chug and sputter when it needs lots of fuel. Any input would be appreciated.

 

stalling at low rpms? check for vacume leaks around the throttle body and hoses running to it.

 

possibly, your gauge cluster problems could b due to pinched wires, or a wire grounding out somewhere, i kno that is vague but thats where i would start my search

 

This has happened to me. I fought with it for a year but no solution. When car is cold in winter I can drive about 5 miles before it goes out.I replaced with 3 gauge cluster and Autometer C2 tach. Problem solved............Good luck

 

Fixed

Thanks very much for your help everyone.

 

what did u do to keep the fuse from popping?

 

I had a bad fuel pump relay and a short elsewhere. Both of them were apparently playing games with the electrical systems on the car.