Hello,
It seems as if we have a short somewhere or something....
We just switched gauge clusters to an extremely low mile one and are having the same problem.what's happening is sometimes the tach goes out,sometimes the speedometer and all the the other gauges go out. When they do usually all of the warning lights come on.

As of today since installing the new cluster we have an airbag light and check gauges light and no speedometer.
Last time when we shut the car off and restarted everything was working correctly. This time it doesn't.
We are completely lost!!! We did put a new dash assembly in and the connector that the gauges plug into seem kinda sloppy/loose.

On the other hand we had mice problems that ate the wiring above the gas tank that messed up the fuel gauge that had to be replaced a couple years ago.

Our code reader isn't reading any codes. Would there be a code for the airbag if there was an issue? Will it pass NYS inspection with lights on and no codes??

It really stinks.....We have had the car almost 5 years. Tons of money put into it,and problem after problem and are finally putting it on the road Thursday to break the motor in,and now don't know what to do,or if it's going to pass inspection.
Any help given will be greatly appreciated!!

 

Are ALL of these problems happening on both clusters?

 

Yes, pretty much which we thought was odd, except with the original cluster it worked properly if you shut the car off and restarted it.
With The new cluster when the car was restarted it didn't change anything. We have the check gauges light and airbag light on now.

I was reading something interesting yesterday saying if you use a used gauge cluster the airbag light will stay on. It said you have to get the matching airbag module.
Tomorrow we are going to put the old cluster back in and see what that does.

 

What year is the car and what year are the cluster(s)? I know that if they aren't matched properly you can get all sorts of weird issues.

Does sound like some kind of connection problem if the first cluster works properly after a restart.

 

To protect against rolling back the odometer on cars by switching clusters, they should be re-programmed for the car. There should be services that can do this for you.

A lot of folks have odd happenings on the cluster from bad grounds. You may search the threads for "cluster ground" and see what you find.

 

It's a 99. I believe the cluster is from an 01.

 

I will take a look, thank you. We did put the old cluster in today and it was mostly good. Check gauges light came on once and didn't come back on after being restarted.
Unfortunately the Windows got stuck down for a while then they decided to start working again a bit later.