1999 Plymouth Grand Voyager - all the gauges tach, speedo, fuel, etc., do not function on a restart after about a drive of 20 miles or so. Any suggestions where I should start looking?
gates
It’s likely your Voyager is suffering from the same defect that afflicts most Chrysler cars of that era – solder breaks on the back of the instrument cluster. These breaks result from the cheap method of cold soldering that Chrysler used at that time for their manufacture.
The mechanic’s solution is to replace the instrument cluster, but many owners will make any effort to fix the problem themselves. Here’s a video of how to do it:
Great video clip, Steve. If I interpret what you say, the most likely culprets are the IC connections on the board. What makes these the likely problem… what about the other solder connections? Back in my day, these boards were wave soldered so that all connections should be equal. You mention cold soldering. How does that differ?
Give credit to the guy who made the video.
I cannot offer any technical details about Chrysler’s manufacturing process, other than to say that it was supposed to be a cost-saving method that produced circuit boards that worked well for several years but eventually suffered failure. Many makes/models are affected.
The above video is but one of many similar how-to fixes posted on the web for this common problem. They all identify those 20 points as the trouble spots.
Finally, there is no guarantee that anyone with an instrument cluster problem can attribute it to solder breaks. A bad ground or some other wiring problem may be responsible. One must use one’s own judgement.
Thank you - we are up and running.
So tell us – how did you resolve this? What was the problem and how did you fix it?