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Interior gauges don't work.

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Old Sep 28, 2010 | 12:46 PM
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Default Interior gauges don't work.

My coolant temperature and oil pressure gauges don't work. They both usually read really low or sometimes randomly shoot up to the middle. Sometimes i've noticed my oil pressure gauge shake back and forth extremely fast when i give it gas in higher gears. It is only the left 2 gauges, my battery voltage and gas gauges work fine. My low coolant level light comes on randomly as well as my SES light, but they go on and off all the time so i'm guessing it's related to this. I really have no clue where to even start with something like this, any advice is appreciated. The car is a bone stock 1998 Z28 M6.

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Old Sep 28, 2010 | 01:44 PM
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I haven't experienced this problem in my T/A but my S-10 the guages did what they wanted. I took the cluster out, the harness receiver the plastic bit that the harness plugs into had cracked all the solder points. I re-soldered the points back on so the conection was firm reinstalled the cluster and no more dancing gauges.

I'd start there, but good luck, it sounds electrical.
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Old Sep 28, 2010 | 02:44 PM
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I pulled the cluster out and i immediately noticed it was different than my 2000. IIRC, there were a couple seperate connectors going to the back of the cluster. On my 98, there's just one big connection in the back. The sensor for the coolant was connected (by spark plug 1?), i don't know where the one for the oil is. The fact that neither one of them work is what doesn't make since to me
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Old Sep 29, 2010 | 02:52 PM
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I still feel like its in your cluster. Not sure how close to Lincoln you are but if you're fairly close you might PM andrew69_04 see if he has any extra clusters lying around to see if the same thing happens with a differant cluster. Good Luck
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Old Sep 30, 2010 | 11:10 PM
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I live in Lincoln, i'd have to shoot him a PM. He has everything
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Old Jun 6, 2011 | 01:09 PM
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Bump, i tried changing out clusters and the gauges acted the same way. Seriously, where is the first place i could start on figuring this out? It's so weird that both of the left gauges act funny/don't work...but its not cluster related.
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Old Jul 4, 2011 | 11:18 PM
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Originally Posted by slikrider20
Bump, i tried changing out clusters and the gauges acted the same way. Seriously, where is the first place i could start on figuring this out? It's so weird that both of the left gauges act funny/don't work...but its not cluster related.
bump.
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Old Jul 5, 2011 | 01:32 AM
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Bad ground or Alternator is putting out alot of AC ripple. Put a voltmeter on your battery while engine is running and measure on AC volts. I wouldnt think it should be much more than 150mv(millivolts). But AC on your DC power wires will play havoc on your gauges, eventually burning the coils out on the gauges. The battery will eventually go Kaboom too!

I'll measure my truck tomorrow to see what its at.
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Old Aug 1, 2011 | 01:46 AM
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Bump. I really want to figure this out but i have no idea where to start!!!!!

Let me explain the issue again. The left 2 gauges on my car act extremely weird. They will NEVER actually read in the middle at the same time. If one gauge is reading correctly, the other one will be all the way down. The car is not throwing any codes. The only sound i hear is some "clicking sounds" when the car is first started cold.

If i'm in like 6th gear, and push down the gas sometimes the gauges will shake back and forth all over the place. Does anyone else have any ideas of what could be wrong?
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Old Aug 2, 2011 | 03:06 PM
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Bump!
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Old Aug 3, 2011 | 07:12 PM
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It could be a number of things. Electrical issues are a night mare.
Are there any other electrical problems? It could be a loose or broken wire, bad ground, BCM going bad, corrosion on the back of the fuse block in the engine compartment, bad sensor, bad sensor wire, etc. If you know somebody with a professional scanner, you might want to try and scan the electrical circuits. That should tell you if you have a bad BCM or not. I would check out the BCM and look at the back of it to see if it has any cracked solder joints. There is a fix for it on here somewhwere. Good luck
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Old Aug 4, 2011 | 03:30 AM
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Thanks for the advice but i have no idea what a BCM even is lol. I know nothing about electronics. I wonder how much a shop would charge to diagnose this.
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Old Aug 4, 2011 | 03:22 PM
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https://ls1tech.com/forums/general-l...blems-fix.html
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