I have a 2006 ford taurus that the dash started flickering about a month ago then it was fine for a couple weeks, yesterday it started flickering again, and then today it completely stopped working all gauges like car is off, check engine and battery light is on as well as oil light, car runs great regardless of cluster out or not. Air conditioning goes out when cluster goes out. I see many things on lights for the cluster but nothing for this and nothing with the a/c as well, please help
The most likely suspect may be the ACC contacts of the ignition switch. I would check that first to see if that is the case by checking for voltage. If that isn’t working then some of the fuses in the dash panel will most likely have no power to them while the ignition switch is in the RUN posiiton. You can check for power by using the slits on top of the fuses to probe for power to them.
If @Cougar 's ideas don’t resolve this – and those are a good place to start — take a look-see under the dash, looking for half-undone connectors, or connectors that appear burned or corroded. Especially if this started after someone was repairing something in that vicinity, like installing a new brake or clutch master cylinder, new brake light switch, repairing the radio, AC or Heater, etc.
Cougar and GeorgeSanJose have given good advice. I would only add that a careful look at a wiring diagram might help. You’re looking for any point common to the gauges and the air conditioning (do you mean only the heater fan, or the AC compressor clutch, too?).
I have no idea if its the heater fan or compressor clutch, all I know is its not blowing cold like normal and its blowing hot. Where is acc contact of ignition at, I live in texas theres no way in hell im turning on the heat to see if that works, lol. No work has been done under dash. Ill check fuses tonight when sun goes down just didnt think that a fuse controls dash gauges and air conditioning. The light to dash is great, just gauges dont register and engine, battery light is on…took it to autozone and the meter kept saying error so I dont know if its not sending message to their tester or he said his tester could be broken.
Their scan tool probably was unable to connect to your car’s ECM (computer). So it displayed an “error” message.
The analogy is say when you try to print something from your desktop computer, and the computer can’t b/c it can’t find any printer attached to the computer. You know that error message, right? Everybody sees it once in a while. Later you discover somebody has unplugged the printer b/c their Snickers bar fell behind the printer stand and if the question is between a Snickers bar and an operational printer, well that’s pretty simple … lol …
So it’s almost certain something in the wiring harness has become disconnected. You may need to bring in an auto-electrics expert to help you find out what it is.
Verify that all the fuses in the panel under the are getting power to them. They should be HOT at all times. You should have at least a test light probe to check the power with. Power may not be getting to the OBD2 connector due to a bad fuse or a faulty power lead after the fuse panel.
The ACC contacts of the ignition switch are part of the ignition switch, which should be under the cover of the steering column.
Ok I replaced every fuse inside the car and still nothing, yesterday I took them out and put back in and worked for awhile before going back to being broken. But I didnt have fuses with me so I couldnt replace, now I did and like I said nothing. All the people I find want 150 just to look at it so I really dont want to take it in, fuses are good but I havent tested to see if they are all getting power. Guess it’s time to buy a light probe.
It still seems to me that the most likely suspect for the trouble is with the ACC switch contacts. When you find the ignition switch try tapping it with a screwdriver handle to see if that makes things change. You have an intermittent connection and tapping on suspected trouble areas often works in locating the bad (boy) connection.