98 Silverado dash gauge lights intermittently coming on and engine dying?

[mossie]

Mostly when driving at slow speeds, or taking off several gauge lights will flash on, and off, and the engine dies. Sometimes the clock will reset itself to 1:00. It will restart but the problem usually repeats when putting back in drive and attempting to take off again. It hasn't happened, if I can manage to get up to speed.

I have also got in it after it has sat all night, and nothing would happen when turning the key over; everything was completely dead, no gauge lights, no interior lights, buzzers, radio or anything. After switching the key on and off several times, suddenly everything came back on, and it started up.

The battery cable seem to connected securely to the battery.

It's been at the shop for several days, without a diagnosis.

HELP !!

[amac209]

pay close atention to the battery cables. not just at the battery. i'd say the nut on the starter is loose where all the big power wires connect. check the main grounds to the engine block and body. did you take the battery terminals off and clean them first?? those side terminals are bad for coroding. after you get the bad conection fixed get both the alternator and battery load tested. a bad alternator causes most of the symptoms you have except the starting one. one more possibility but less likely is a bad ignition switch.. should be a simple problem with a simple solution!!!! let me know what you find

[mossie]

it's been at the shop for 4 days and they still haven't figured it out. They believe it's a wiring problem, with a wire grounding out somewhere. They have the reputation for being the best repair shop in the area.

The brake light, the anti-lock brake light, the interior light, will come on and the door open buzzer will sound for no apparent reason.

[amac209]

i'd be more inclined to say it's a wire not grounding well enough. sounds like it's time to break out the wiring diagrams and figure out what all these circuits have in common and go after it. most wires that ground out will blow fuses or fuseable links or catch on fire. i still think the problem is under the hood myself. sounds like a pretty good shop!!! only 4 days and no fix!! actually i shouldn't badmouth them yet last summer at the place i worked at we had a chevy diesel van with a bad gas gage. sounds simple enough its gotta be either the sending unit or gage we had an extra sending unit kicking around, pluged it in, no gas gage. so we plugged in another instrument cluster which was good, guess what no gage. time to look at book followed all the steps which let to a bad buffer module under the dash. order new module pop it in. no friggen gas gage.. spend another day double checking absolutely everything and the book still points to the buffer module.. can't be the module because it's new right?? finally we bought another new buffer module and hey works like it should. electrical problems are either a quick fix or a big nightmare sounds like yours is turning into the later. good luck!!

[GMMerlin]

I would check the grounds carefully.
Also check "power moding" (a good tech knows what that is) when the fault occurs.

[mossie]

I would assume the main problem with diagnosing it is when it happens, it's just for a couple of seconds, and the guage lights turn back off. The condition doesn't last long enough, to check it.

I'll post the diagnosis, if I ever get one.

[mossie]

Not sure whether it needed it or not, but they replace the ignition switch, and said there was a grounding problem where the battery cable went to the block.

Regardless, I'm happy my truck is running smoothly again!

[amaris]

I have this EXACT same problem in my Chev 3500 1 ton flat bed. Did the ignition switch replacement work?

[amaris]

OK- just got it back from the mechanic. Of course they couldn't reproduce this by normal driving, so they commenced the jiggle test and eventually found the problem in a connection. In my case there was literally a nut loose on the back of the fuse box.