Fuel and temp gauge and Battery

[grim596]

Took a reasonably long drive last weekend, on the way back my fuel gauge and my temp gauge slowly descended to zero and my battery light came on all at once, this has happened before but all it took was an engine restart to remedy it, I'm afraid this time it may be more permanent.
Has anyone encountered this?
Can anyone point me in the right direction as to how to fix it?

[Warranty Void]

Sounds like you lost electric power mate, could be a dud battery, could be a blown fuse, or a blown relay, could be a dud earth or alternator or the alternator brushes.
For a start check your battery with a multimeter while running the motor, should be 12 volts roughly not running, up to 14.5 volts running at about 2500 rpm with the alternator working properly.
Check the fuses under the bonnet and under the dash.
Is the instruments all that doesn't work?

[grim596]

Fuses are fine
Brushes are fine
Battery... not sure (need to get a multimeter)
Alternator is good had it checked not long ago
When i had a stereo there was a whiny noise that increased with engine revs took the stereo out to test it and broke it so i can't check that
I've looked everywhere i can for a bad earth... can't find one...
The car drives fine, has no problems at all...
I'm getting a new car soon, my plan is to drive that around for a while and pull this one apart, spray it and put it all back together again, Properly, new wiring harnesses, carpets, seats, trims. needs a few new bits... and a bigger engine
Thanks for helping Warranty

[Gosling1]

your battery could be dry ? Check the cells for fluid......

[Darren_L]

could be a faulty voltage regulator in the instrument panel
although after re-reading what you said, you mentioned the battery light came on as well. Voltage regulator should only affect the gauges.

[VanillaFrog]

I have been having exactly the same problem. I am quite sure it is to do with the instrument panel itself as a good hit will sometimes get it to return to normal. Just to clarify, no power to anything else was lost. Just the 2 guages fell to zero and the battery light comes on.
I agree with what Darren_L has said although I would like to know if you have remedied the problem...

[zzxvtx]

i recently bought a 92 vp calais with the same issue. i would also like to hear if anyone has resolved this problem. im putting in a new battery and checking the fuses tomorrow so ill let you know how i go.

[Jxw]

as mentioned above, sounds like the regulator board in the cluster, i've seen them do funny things to the lights and gauges when they have dry joints, get it out of the cluster and run a soldering iron over all the points with new solder.

[zzxvtx]

Fixed!!!!

i was told by the the mechanic the battery light will only come on if its not being charged by the alternator, after further investigation i found browny/red wire hanging next to the positive terminal on the battery, after lugging it onto the + terminal BAM! the battery light is gone. the machanic also mentioned to me that the dash cluster actually pushes into the dash.after pushing on the front of the glass of the cluster and a bit of whackingthe fuel and temp guage revived themselves. in conclusion, push/whack your dash cluster, check your alternator is charging (12.7v idle, 14v @ about 2500rpm), and look for any broken wires in your engine bay! i cant be bothered fixing the dash myself so im just gonna pay the mech to put a new 1 in for me, ill let u kn ow how much it costs.

[Jxw]

well the alternator wire explains that, giving the dash a thump will sometimes sort a dry joint out (till you hit a bump in the road or the expansion/retraction of metal from heating/cooling causes a bad join again) if you are slightly competent at soldering it'll cost you a few cents worth of solder and about 30 mins to pull the cluster out and dismantle it enough to pull the reg board out and less than that to put it back together and reinstall it, a lot cheaper than a new cluster and what the mech will charge to remove/install.
For anyone replacing the cluster with a 2nd hand one i'd suggest doing the same as most likely with the age of them it'll be/not far off suffering the same problem.



image is about 150% the size of the board, it's really straight forward and easy to simply heat up each solder point till it melts and add a small amount of fresh solder to repair a dry solder joint. the image is a level 3 board a l1 or l2 will have less points you need to solder as it won't have as many components on the same size pcb, all the darker points have had this done, the shiny points have no components soldered to them so weren't needing any attention, tbh the main culprit was the row of 10 joints where the connector for the cluster is, so i didn't have to pull it out again i did all joints in case i missed one that wasn't clearly visable.
This particular board had fuel/temp gauge intermittently working and globes lighting up dimly when they weren't supposed to if another thing was turned on (even triggered the rear demister relay and turned it on when the pwr/eco button was pressed on the console) a quick run over and it's 100% working again.

[zzxvtx]

just dropped the 3 year old oil out of my car and put some fresh fuel in it. all my gauges work now =D