Instrument cluster intermittent power loss

[MusicLover]

I have a 2004 ST and the instrument cluster will lose power intermittently. The gauges all go the the position when the key is off. And also the radio loses power, and the power windows lose power.

It will come back on a few minutes later, sometimes this is in a TEST mode that appears where the odometer is displayed, but not always. Either way, after driving for a few more minutes, everything comes back on and works fine. Weird thing is, even with a full tank of gas, the "low fuel" tone will chime, even though nothing is displayed on the led display.

Anyone ever had this problem before? Could be the wiring harness between the front driver's door and front pillar grounding out, could be a loose connection in the harness in the dash panel, could be a cold solder joint in the cluster itself.

Just seeking a starting point on where to look first.

Thank you.

 

[Crock1]

I have a 2004 ST and the instrument cluster will lose power intermittently. The gauges all go the the position when the key is off. And also the radio loses power, and the power windows lose power.

It will come back on a few minutes later, sometimes this is in a TEST mode that appears where the odometer is displayed, but not always. Either way, after driving for a few more minutes, everything comes back on and works fine. Weird thing is, even with a full tank of gas, the "low fuel" tone will chime, even though nothing is displayed on the led display.

Anyone ever had this problem before? Could be the wiring harness between the front driver's door and front pillar grounding out, could be a loose connection in the harness in the dash panel, could be a cold solder joint in the cluster itself.

Just seeking a starting point on where to look first.

Thank you.

Did you ever run down your issue i have the exact same problem

 

[MusicLover]

Did you ever run down your issue i have the exact same problem

Did you ever run down your issue i have the exact same problem

I checked the wiring harness in the driver's door-to-cab area and everything seemed okay. That is a real PITA to get apart, the wiring harness is not easily taken apart, you have to unbolt the top part of the round plastic housing from the bottom part and the harness unplugs, but not easily. Then trying to dig through all the wires to find one that is chaffed or even broken. I ended up putting some liquid electrical tape on a few of the wires that had broken insulation, because the wires were still intact. It is kind of a gooey black tar-like product. On a different '04 ST I had a few years ago, I needed to put a splice into three different wires that were broken, it is really tight to work in that area, but it is do-able. Anyway, I ended up sending the whole instrument cluster to Pixeltek in Montreal which is the province of Quebec in Canada. Their website is https://pixeltek.ca and they did great job, also had the lowest price for me, being in Canada. There were three or four other instrument cluster repair places in the US, they had quite a higher price and also it was costly for shipping across the US/Canada border. I remember (I think) there were places in South Carolina, Texas, and Utah. If you google search (or whatever) "instrument cluster repair" on the internet I'm sure you will find them. Being in Alabama then you won't have the higher cost (and time) of shipping across the border. It may look intimidating to take out the cluster if you have never done this before, but it is pretty simple...lots of threads on this forum and instructions on the 'net how to do that. Good luck Crock1!

 

[MusicLover]

By the way, they replaced three capacitors and one resistor. It is apparently one or more of these four places where these clusters always fail, so they just replace all of these components whether they need to be or not. Also updated the lighting to all LED's and they are way brighter. They got it back to me about two weeks after I sent it.

 

[N2FORD]

My father in law has an 05 Adrenalin and is having a similar issue. The truck was mine for several years but he now has it. The cluster went down in it, check engine light came on and the miles went to dashes. I did get it back working just doing the test but it only worked 2 days. The radio, windows and everything else seems to work okay. I am assuming the cluster needs rebuilt? Anybody agree before I remove it? I found a somewhat local guy that advertises he fixes them.