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Digital dash

MA87K5

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Apr 6, 2000
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Chicopee, Ma 01020
Have a problem with it not lighting up. Speedo, odom, blinkers light but nothing else. What would cause this thanks.
 
Um... more info please. Could be anything from a blown fuse to a loose wire, so excatly what is going on and what is it in?
 
Get a test light and check the fuse for the dash for power. Ground one end of the light to the frame, and the other to the hot side of the fuse socket. No light, no good, your problem is in that part of the circuit. Light= good. Your problem is from the fuse to the dash, to the ground for the gauges. Do you have a digital multi-tester or can get one? You'll need it for the next part because the dash has computers and a test light can push too much electricity through the circuits and fry them. Find the + power feed wire onto the back of the gauges and check it for resistance. No or low resistance is a good wire, and mine says OL for "outside Limits" or a break in the wire. If it's good, you prolly have a bad ground. Test the ground in the same way.

There are only 3 things that go wrong with any circuit: Break in the wire (open) corrsion causing high resistance, or a short. Since yours has good fuses, you can count a short out, and since it don't work at all, I can count high resistance off the list. That leaves an open in the circuit somewhere.

I've seen a car that was renedered "dead" by a single wire feeding the ECU, so keep an eye out for anything.

Hope this helps.
 
Have a problem with it not lighting up. Speedo, odom, blinkers light but nothing else. What would cause this thanks.


I have a cluster where the speedo and blinkers are the only things that don't work, everything else does. Maybe two clusters could make one good one?
 
Thinking futher, I think it's a ground issue with the cicuits that won't work. Every feature on that dash has it's own power wire that the signal for that function, but many share a common ground wire to make for fewer wires and it's less complex. Check the grounds, I think you'll find your problem there.
 
There are several companies that fix those dashes. Its common for them to fail that way. The digital board in the cluster fail.
 
THis might not be the answer you want, but I used to have a 1991 4.3L S10 and I had the same issues. In the end, the only fix was to take it to the dealer and they replaced it with a new one, and reprogrammed it with the mileage from my old one. This was years ago, so maybe you don't need the dealer any more. But I couldn't DIY.
 

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