98 Intrigue Gas Gage freaked out

[ATonyMac]

My 98 Intrigue gas gage has lost it's mind. Ok, picture this: The gage swings from the 7:00 to the 11:00 positions, with E at the 7, F at the 11. At the 12:00 position, there is a peg, that stops the further clockwise travel of the needle. Somehow (when beloved wifey was driving) the needle got to the wrong side of the peg. It should have stayed on the left side of the peg, but it's now trapped on the right side of the peg. It seems to want to go counterclockwise thru the peg to get back where it belongs. It doesn't try to go further clockwise, thru the E to the corect level. Short of removing the gage cluster, any suggestions?

[2Legit84]

Originally Posted by ATonyMac

My 98 Intrigue gas gage has lost it's mind. Ok, picture this: The gage swings from the 7:00 to the 11:00 positions, with E at the 7, F at the 11. At the 12:00 position, there is a peg, that stops the further clockwise travel of the needle. Somehow (when beloved wifey was driving) the needle got to the wrong side of the peg. It should have stayed on the left side of the peg, but it's now trapped on the right side of the peg. It seems to want to go counterclockwise thru the peg to get back where it belongs. It doesn't try to go further clockwise, thru the E to the corect level. Short of removing the gage cluster, any suggestions?

same problem I am having with my 98' Intrigue. Mine happened when the ignition switch went out in the vehicle, the clusters started going crazy, after it got fixed, the needed was stuck on the oppisite side of the peg. It doesn't move at all. the mechanic told me I would have to replace the entire cluster panel. They are relatively cheap, probably under $50 from the junkyard. So all I am doing now is resetting the trip odometer and when I get close to 300 miles, then I know its time to refuel. I hate this car

[ATonyMac]

Yeah, our cluster goes crazy every once in a while. All the lights lite up for a few seconds, then go out and it all starts working normally again.

The GM dealer said new cluster needed -- $511 installed. I'm thinking we're gonna do the trip OD thing for a while.

My old Jeep had a bad resister in the fuel gage wire harness that made it sit at E. Wonder if that might be the prob......

[panzer dragoon]

make sure each electrical component is finding a solid ground. Check the connections for corrosion.

For finding a good ground: find a piece of frame that is metal and check for resistance to the respective ground connection. Using the neg end of the battery and going down the car checking the grounds will work also.

[ATonyMac]

I unplugged the connectors at the sending unit. Pretty cool, you can access the sending unit thru the trunk. It was pretty dusty, but the weatherproof connectors were clean and tight. I started the car with the conectors unplugged, and of course, it quickly quit when the fuel rail depressurized. I had hoped that might 'reset' the system, no luck. Hadn't really tried to check the ground at the cluster, I'll do that if I take the cluster out.

[fallen4shell]

I work in an auto repair shop for a living and I see this fuel guage problem quite a bit in late model GM vehicles (this includes: buick, oldsmobile, pontiac, chevy, etc...). It seems to be a problem primarily in 98 and 99 year models. While I am unsure WHY it happens, I know exactly HOW and WHEN it happens so I thought I would give you guys the head's up. The needles in your guages are some kind of electromagnetically controlled and they all JUMP every time that the battery or main batter fuse is disconnected and then re-connected. So if you ever have a dead battery or any work done on the vehicle that requires disconnecting the battery...you can pretty much count on having to deal with this problem. IT WILL HAPPEN EVERY TIME YOU RECONNECT THE BATTERY.

To fix it, you can take the cluster out, take the plastic face off of the cluster, manually (as in with my finger) move the fuel needle back over to the right side of the peg, and then superglue a peg just below the full mark on the fuel guage so that when it jumps it cannot go all the way around.

My boss called our local dealership about this and they admitted they had seen several cars with this problem but they didn't know what was causing it. Anyway, I have yet to figure out a way to prevent it from happening to begin with. I tried such things as pulling fuses related to the instrument cluster before I re-connected the battery which DID allow me to reconnect the battery with no trouble, but then as soon as I put the fuse back in the needle jumped all the way back around. Somebody at the GM factory just didn't think something through apparently...it is a design flaw.