Dash smash

[burnM]

I'd like to smash it, but it'll never happen.... a temper costs money

Gotta love that digital crap....
I've had a problem with the speedo since I bought the car. At first it was just an intermittant issue. The speedo would work when it wanted to. Usually after about 20 minutes of driving at highway speed it would read the speed, then out of nowhere drop back to zero, then back to whatever speed I was driving, then 5 minutes later back to zero. I could deal with that (for now). I also have a tachometer in the car, and used that as a reference for my speed.

Weeks go by and I finally realise - speed sensor. So I pick one up, and install it. No change. Not the vss. Must be the cluster.

I found a parts car and ripped out the entire guage cluster. Cost me ten bucks, and was a pretty good deal. So, I decided to swap the cluster. I cleaned the pins in the dash and the cluster and installed it. Everything worked fine. Speedo, tach, water, oil, fuel, and volts all working perfectly.

Then, a few weeks down the road, it started doing the same as before, so I figured..... screw it, I'm not going to buy a brand new one from a dealer. I'll leave it be (for now).

Still more time passes, and then the display takes a dump. Black. That's it. No reading at all. Every now and again it would flicker back to life and then go dead again. Now is when I start to get sick of it. I remove the cluster, disassemble both, and use the best parts from both to make one good one. Works fine, no problems.

Now, the problems have resurfaced. Except that the display does not flicker back to life any longer. It has now died. Black. Nothing. However, the odometer and trip meter still whirr away while I travel.

I want to smash it. I want to put my fist clear through it. But I can't bring myself to do it.

Anyone else have this problem? Anyone have a clue as to how to fix it?

Help. I don't want to kill my dash.....

[Kooterskkar]

Check for shorts.

[burnM]

I did that.... but found none. I did however find a thread about resoldering certain things on the board in the Oldsmobile forum. I think I'll give that a try..... when I get a soldering gun....

[sspmw]

You might want to check your Body Control Module. A wire on the harness might be loose or it might need to be replaced. I had the same problem a few years ago but after the BCM was replace it worked fine.

[HuSSker]

A common problem with the digital dash is the connector on the back becomes dirty, and loses continuity. Most of the time, it causes the display to go blank, but it could probably drop it to 0 just the same. It won't cost anything , so you may want to pull the cluster, and clean up the connector.

Doing a search in the electrical section of www.impalassforum.com could shed more light on the issue.

EDIT: I see you already tried cleaning, I'd still check the URL above to see what you can find.

[burnM]

Thanks man, checking the site right now....