Instrument Panel Heat Issue - 2004 GXP
 

My instrument cluster - speedomoter, voltmeter, temperature gauge and oil pressure gauge work fine when the car has not been sitting in the hot sun all day. When the car sits out in the sun all day these gauges do not work at all or they register the wrong reading. After the car sits in the garage over night the gauges work fine, but later in the day after sitting in the sun the problem recurs. The car is 5 years old and has 58,000 miles on it. This problem showed up a few months ago. Has anyone had this problem and if so how was it resolved? Do I need a new instrument panel or is there a fix?

The problem is either delamination of a circuit board or a condition called cold solder. When things heat up, the board expands and contacts between solder points or circuit board layers are lost. When they loose contact you can loose power, ground or the signal circuit. In most cases if it's not a bad solder joint that you can find and fix, the circuit board will need to be replaced.

There have been a few issues with this dash instrument cluster from the get go. Unfortunately GM bought these from the vendor as one peice and individual parts arent available. Morad parts would be your best bet for one cheaper than the like $700 GM wants.

There is a fix but it's not easy. These cars (and several other GM brands) had a run of bad stepper motors in the cluster. I had 5 of my 6 gauges going crazy and finally ran across the "fix": replacing all 6 motors! There are instructions on the net somewhere ; you can get a "6-pack" of new motors from ebay for about $30. Basically you have to pull the cluster (not hard), pull the board (not bad) , de-solder the 6 motors from the board (not fun at all unless you do this for a living), and re-solder the 6 new ones. I did it in an evening after work but YMMV.

Sean