Well after suffering much abuse, my car has finally had a problem. I drive a 2004 corolla, nothing special. The car has 66000 on it, and just had the serpentine belt changed. Other then that, its been totally awesome. Just the other day i got in my car, started it. Looked down at the instrument cluster and noticed that nothing was working. The car was running fine, the radio,switches,signals all worked fine. But the dials in the dashboard were dead. I turned the car off and on, drove it around the block, and still the dials would not move. So i took it to a local shop to have them check the fuses, etc. they said they couldn’t find a blown fuse and that the cluster needs to be replaced. Tonight I started the car up, and the temp and gas gauges started bouncing their respective needles. The needles wouldn’t move very far. But they were moving about 30 times a minute. So not a big change. I turn the car off, and the needles keep bouncing. They’ve been bouncing steady for a while now and i am very confused. Does anyone have an idea whats going on?
Did I correctly interpret that the gauges are still bouncing even when the car is shut off?? That’s kinda wild.
I’m gonna venture a guess that there’s a short somewhere, from a wire that’s always hot. Perhaps the hot wire to the clock/radio or the computer?? This sort of thing can be a bear to track down…
It is an electrical issue and likely the entire dash needs replacing. However maybe find an electrical speciality shop and have them look at it.
You may be able to save some money if it is the dash getting a junkyard instrument cluster.