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2004 Silverado K1500 with dead instrument panel

S

steve_in_mo

Well-known Member
Brain trust question: Friend's instrument panel went dead
suddenly. Came back to life for a few seconds then went
dead again and stayed dead.

I know that's a troublesome instrument cluster but everything
going dead at once may also be a bad ground. Since fixing a
bad ground is much cheaper than replacing the cluster, I
thought he ought to do that first. I haven't found a youtube
video that clearly shows hot to find and clean up the ground.

Anyone? Thanks!
 
Have you tried pulling it out of the dash and reinstalling to burnish the contacts a bit?
 
not positive but some have a ground wire on the lower left of the block same place battery negative cable attaches that critters like to chew off and usually one on the back of the engine, but more than likely a cluster issue in that era truck.
 
Power transistors are coming loose from the circuit board. Starting to see it a lot. They can be resoldered, but it is a very delicate repair. Dorman clusters are a good price now and have a lifetime warranty. The fly by night places just replace the stepper motors and ship them. I am also starting to see battery drains from those clusters, there seems to be corrosion between the circuit board layers that causes that.
 
Chevy had trouble with bad solder joints in the instrument cluster. There are plenty of youtube videos with the fix. I think that is where I would start. As Bob said it could also be the plug/pins on the back of the cluster.
 
I had a similar issue on my 2002 GMC 2500HD, using my volt meter found the ground was missing. I traced the wire back thru the firewall, could not figure out where it went from there, since it was a ground wire, I tapped into the wire and grounded it directly to the Firewall. Has worked fine since, I did this probably 10 years ago now... Hope that is all that is wrong, easy fix.
 
(quoted from post at 16:53:05 06/17/18) Brain trust question: Friend's instrument panel went dead
suddenly. Came back to life for a few seconds then went
dead again and stayed dead.

I know that's a troublesome instrument cluster but everything
going dead at once may also be a bad ground. Since fixing a
bad ground is much cheaper than replacing the cluster, I
thought he ought to do that first. I haven't found a youtube
video that clearly shows hot to find and clean up the ground.

Anyone? Thanks!
Click to expand...

My 2003 2500 did the same thing. Took it in and there was a tech bulletin on it that required the instrument cluster to get a code flash upgrade. No issues since. Been over a year. Kown issue.
 
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