Guages/ instrument cluster short?

[chaddafd]

I have a 2001 Suburban 2500 4WD. When driving over any bumps, the guages go to 0 (all guages, speedo, tach, fuel, temp,etc.) and the battery, abs, and airbag lights come on. It is just an intermittent problem. Everything immediately comes back up until the next bump.
Note: nothing else is compromised (headlights, radio, performance, etc. are not affected)

I have taken the cluster out and "bounced" it around in my hand while the truck is running and cannot duplicate the problem. Ihave check ground wires and battery cables.

Any ideas?

[jesusg87]

I am having the same problem have you had any luck in solving it?

[777stickman]

My change the "Gauges" fuse.

[mwietstock]

I just started having the same problem in my 2001 Suburban. My first thought was a bad fuse too, and I love the "change the 'gauges' fuse" suggestion, except there is no single "gauges" fuse that I've yet been able to locate in either the left side dash or underhood fuse blocks, and no fuse or closed-block relay/part bearing the number mentioned in this post. There are several 10 amp fuses that are identified in the owners manual as serving the "instrument panel," and I've checked all of these, with no luck so far. This seems like it should be a relatively easy problem to solve. Does anyone know the answer to this??

[mwietstock]

Here's a little more detail: My 2001 Suburban instrument cluster includes: message center; trans. temp; tachometer; speedometer/odometer; fuel; ammeter; oil pressure and coolant temp gauges. All but the ammeter and oil pressure gauges stop working. Everything else in the car seems to be operating normally. Here's the interesting part. When I push the reset button for the trip odometer, the whole instrument panel springs back to life; when I let it go, the same gauges go dead again. Obviously, the reset button closes a bypass circuit. The question of the day is: exactly what circuit(s), fuse(s) or relay(s) does the odometer reset button bypass, because that's probably where my problem lies. Anybody have a clue?

[mwietstock]

After my last post, the entire panel died. No functions at all. However, the problem has now been diagnosed and solved. I was lucky enough to find an auto electrician who took out my instrument panel and actually EXAMINED IT ... can you imagine that? He correctly identified the problem as a broken/burned circuit path on the printed circuit board. He repaired the burned circuit, and the entire instrument panel came back to life. PRESTO.

The dealer will NOT do a repair like that. They charge you a bunch of money just to diagnose the problem; tell you you need a new instrument panel, and that the job is going to cost 500 or 600 bucks. Translation: they yank out a perfectly good panel that probably only has one tiny defect or burned circuit in it, like mine; they send it off to some tech geek who has a pile of these things in his workshop in varying states of analysis/repair; he finds one in the pile that looks like yours, and sends it back to the dealer as a "refurb." Then your pristine panel ends up in some other bum's car, and you get stuck with a "refurb" with the tech geek's potato chip crumbs stuck in it. My guy did the diagnosis AND the repair on my panel, "in house," in one day, for $165. Now THAT'S a good repair value.

Now, I don't know what the cause(s) of the other problems I've read about in this thread might be, but if you've already gone through all suspect fuses in both fuse blocks (both the one on the left of the dash, and the one under the hood) and you've confirmed that your problem isn't a burned or defective fuse, or some other wiring or power problem in "front" of the harness leading into the instrument panel, I would suspect that the problem is somewhere on/in the instrument panel itself, and you might want to start looking at your options for repair/replacement of the panel. I did, and fortunately, it worked for me.

[tjmjr72]

i have the same exact problem as MWIETSTOCK on my 02 Avalanch, guess i need to find an Auto electrician to help me

[tjmjr72]

I am having the same problem with my 02 avalanche tryed switching the panel out with my fathers good 02 Avalanche panel and did the same to his, so i dont think it is the panel, reinstalled the panel in his truck and it works fine, every little bump it goes out, now i have no power to any of my gages!