Quote:
Originally Posted by oldtrucker
Hi and happy new year,
seems to me a wiring problems.
You are talking about the 91 300E?
Sometimes, corrosion is your worst enemy. Also, as mentioned before, make sure the plug is correctly plugged in. Whenever I get into an area that can not easily accessed, I use some dielectric grease and put a small amount to the contact pins.
Another big problem, could be a bad return e.g. referred to as chassis ground. Unfortunately some of them may be located in a quite different place.
There are common points on the wheel well (bunsh of brown wires). It may make sense to undo them, clean the ring terminals and give em a bit of the dielectric grease. Then reassemble and see.
When gauges go haywire, it is usually related to a bad grounding system. There maybe a current needed but due to a higher resistance on the return, cannot be achieved. The result is "Jumping Jack Flash".
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Thanks for the reply!
Yes this is with my 300E, the tab the places the round connector on the back had broken off three or so years ago and every time I took out the cluster I always had problems putting it back in because of this, when I went to the junkyard to pull yet another fuel, temp and oil gauge I saw the plug with the cap from the donor car and saw that it was a clip and would come off. I decided to take the cover with the tab off and just put it on mine. I got a diagram off this forum for which wires went to which numbered port and it took me 8 minutes to plug them in, popped my new cap with tab in and I was good to go, no more guessing which way it plugs into and no more burning out gauges!!
However when that was finally in correctly, the gauges were still acting funny, the temp gauge would slowly peg and the fuel gauge would jump around but only when I put the car in a different gear; drive, reverse, neutral ect.. it was really strange. What was scary is that during my heated seat install I messed with a lot of wiring, having to move wires around and I started to think I maybe shorted something or something cracked? I decided to check a ground connection behind the cluster that I had to unscrew and add another ground for the memory seats from the donor car, it was hard to see, so I stuck my camera in there and low and behold found my problem. When I added the new grounding wire for the memory seats, I must have missed this one and it went astray and I just screwed it back in thinking everything was good to go. I put the stray ground back on and my cluster issues ceased to exist, which was a HUGE sigh of relief!
thank you for all your input on this, turns out it was something everyone on this thread said it probably was, a ground. It's amazing what can happen with a ground that's not properly seated!
01-02-2015, 03:06 AM
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