Thread: Weird gauge issue

Yah, I know. I'm not driving the car, and probably wont be for a while, yet. I figured I'd ask a gauge question though, while I'm thinking about it.

When above 80mph and accelerating, (not racing or anything stupid like that, just going over the speed limit is all) my gauges go crazy!

For instance, anything over 4Krpm in 5th gear on the highway, and my water temp, tach, and speedo both start to fall pretty quickly. It seems like power would be draining or something. Slowing back down south of 4500rpm and everything starts to come back.

Is it the cluster, or do you think I may have some grounding issues? Car ran like a beast, and everything worked properly, other than the above mentioned issue.

Nobody?

Can this be moved into Electronics, or something? Not sure where it should fit in.

I take it no one's ever experienced this issue?

i do with my sentra. when i floor it my coolang gauge goes straight to the floor and then levels out when i keep a constant speed

Do they fall as fast as if you were to turn the key off, or is it more gradual?



Honestly IMO it could be either or. The best way I'd test it would be to put in a different cluster and see what happens. There could be a short somewhere on your speedometer coil that causes it to short your ground line when it gets to a certain point.

Considering though your car is going nowhere at the moment, I'd just double and triple check all the grounds, maybe even run a new ground to the cluster connections.

A last effort if you want to know now would be to put the cluster in another compatible car and drive. This will likely tell you what you need to know as well, but be warned I've had instances where a bad cluster works in someone else's car but not mine. Couldn't tell you why, but it did.

It' a gradual drop, not really like an immediate "cut-off". If I stay constant, it does not change when it starts to go haywire. If I sit at 5500rpm in 5th, the gauges do not read accurate in the slightest. Only way to get the gauges back is to drop below 4500rpm.

Okay, so, you've narrowed it down to a certain speed. Now, if you're cruising at 5700 or 5800 rpm, I assume the gauges still don't work, what would happen if you engaged the clutch and cruised down past that associated speed? Would they work once the clutch was engaged, or would they not work until after the car coasted down to below that associated speed threshold? Basically, I'm trying to see if it's rpm or velocity associated. I'm leaning toward velocity, but these are quite the surprising cars sometimes

thermostat get new one.

tekkie sorry man i dont know what car u own.. but i know this.. it has a digital speed sensor.. cause thats the only way mph would be effected as well.... analog or cable speed sensor will not let anything distort mph...

i say follow your speed sensor connections look for any short or exposed wire on it hitting ground or just exposed wire.


if all that fails try new cluster or someone elses cluster

A good precaution, but seeing as they go straight from the cluster to the ECU, it's very rare to have that connection go bad unless you've been removing and installing the cluster a lot. But it is possible, and worth a check if you can tilt your head to those funny angles to see it all . I'd also expect more random occurrences with bad wiring rather than at the same rpm every time and only in 5th gear.



Yep, but seeing as how he isn't driving it yet, there are other ways we can narrow it down, including disabling each gauge one-by-one until we find the faulty one. No need to throw money at a problem by buying another cluster when you aren't even sure where the problem is. I always assume a spare isn't available when troubleshooting since that's the world's most obvious test.

rare but who knows whats been hacked or not... a digital sensor is more prone to that compared to a cable driven speed sensor..