Gauges out on Ford 500

Maintenance/Repairs
1

I own a 2005 Ford 500 (<70K miles) which I bought new. It has always been a little quirky but lately it has really started to act up. I have two issues:

1.) Today my wife told me that all of the gauges are not reading (fuel, RPM, speedometer etc). The first time this happened was about 3 years ago and I needed a new battery. However, in February of THIS year I had a new battery installed. The gauges were working fine yesterday but not this morning.
2.) The AC only blows out cool/vent air when the car is not moving. I had the AC unit inspected and was told I needed about 1 lb of Freon which only made the situation more tolerable. The AC works fine when moving down the interstate but in stop and go traffic in SC it can be brutal.

Any insight to this will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

2

I have seen so many of these 500’s over the last few years with “quirky” situations that have been fixed by updating the computer. So the first thing I would suggest is to contact the dealer to see if this could be fixed with an update.