My gauges always flickered, and to be honest never seemed to work completely right. BUT, for the most part they worked well enough to know what was going on with the car. I just put a new center gauge housing in the car while redoing the interior, and now the most I see is a slight flicker every once in a while. The tank is probably 3/4 full but reads about 1/8th when just the accessories are on, then I start up the car and it gauges go completely dead. The oil pressure gauge will flicker every once in a while but nothing useable. Temp gauge seems to be dead and won't move, and the same goes for the battery gauge.

All the lights are working fine though, with the exception of the light for the battery gauge. I switched over everything to LED's while I had it apart if that changes anything. I don't know if I have a bad printed circuit or what the issue is, but it looked like it was in good shape when I had it apart. To aid in making sure I was getting a good connection I applied some dielectric grease but that didn't seem to change anything.

Any help or suggestions are appreciated, starting to think these electrical issues are over my head. Does anyone know of someone in Lake Havasu City that would know what they are doing?

 

Did you replace the illumination lamps with LEDs or did you replace the gauges with LED/digital gauges....not sure.

It is likely the flex printed circuit board and the connection where the wiring harness plugs into. Give those contacts a good cleaning, but if original, it could have a break in the copper trace...which only needs to be a hair line break for it not to work.....hard to see. The flex print will not take alot of connect/disconnects with the dash wiring harness before one or more of the traces are messed-up.

And I know nothing about shops in Lake Havasu City....are you there for the winter?

 

No I didn't switch the gauges to LED's, just the illumination lamps.

I was kind of guessing it was the printed board as well, just wish there was a way to confirm it. I cleaned the contacts where the main connection meets with the circuit board but it didn't seem to change anything.

Yea we're just here on vacation for Christmas. My future in-laws have a home here, and were nice enough to drive it down from Alberta a few months ago so I would be able to have time to put a new interior in it over the break. This is kind of the last thing to figure out! Then I will post all the tear down and install pictures of the interior!

 

You may have a bad ground to the harness. Check continuity between the black wire at the end of the connector and ground. wiggle the harness while you are checking it. sometimes a loose coonection ore cracked wire will start as a flickering or intermitant drops then go out altogether.

 

I will check the ground then. Had a little setback yesterday and my alternator failed. My mechanic mentioned that it could have been because of a bad ground, causing the alternator to work harder and burn out. Does this make much sense?

 

A bad ground at the battery or other main gound connection will increase resistance in the circuit and cause a voltage drop and make the Alt. work harder to cause that problem. In my experience, a small circuit ground issue like the courtesy lights would not be enough to affect the alternator. You may have several electrical issues all brewing at the same time which is not uncommon on cars this vintage.