Fuel gauge bad after battery replacement?
 

2006 Silverado SS - replaced battery, wasn't dead but seemed to be getting a little weak and it's an old battery. Also replaced negative battery cable due to corrosion wicked down into the strands.

Have never had ANY cluster issues with this truck, fuel gauge very accurate up until today. Tank is full just a few miles ago, "range" in the DIC is reading as I expect it to, including going up several miles when I park it on the driveway slope so the sender is working as expected. Gauge sits at half tank mark with key off, turn key on and it goes way past full to 3 o'clock and stays there. :(

Drove it around the neighborhood hoping it would figure itself out but it hasn't.

I took the cluster out, separated the lens a little, and used a wire to push the needle back to the far left. First couple times I turned the truck on, it read correctly at "full" and went to "empty" when I shut it off. After that it's back to screwed up...

Ideas?

Thanks,
Richard

My gauges in my 02 do the same thing about half the time when I disconnect the battery for a while. At least one of the gauges, the needle will drop to straight down, off the scale. Usually its fuel, or speedo. Once I start the truck, I just give it a minute and give a few good taps on the cluster plastic cover, and it corrects itself.

stepper motor is going bad

Yeah, I'm hip to the bad stepper motor thing...it just seems way too coincidental that it was 100% fine until I changed the battery. :(

I've found that some other vehicles let you do a forced gauge cluster reset but doesn't seem to exist for the GMT800 trucks.

Richard

Unfortunately the small voltage spike seem to set it off and they are never the same after that.

I have had 03-07 classic clusters that seem to be functioning correctly, put them in a different vehicle and the 1 or 2 bad gauges suddenly show up. It's not terrible to replace them. But I have had a few that were messed with and when I went to work on them the traces went bad. Which creates a whole nother headache...

On my own stuff, I Will just send it out to someone who stands behind their work. In the Silver truck I put a Brand New cluster in it to avoid these issues. :cheers:

I used Digital Dash Solutions through Ebay for the new one. Not Cheap, But worth knowing I wasn't getting somes rebuilt junk cluster. I have not used them for rebuilding though. Should be someone in your area that does it for a reasonable price.

I'm pretty handy with the soldering iron, fixed lots of stuff. The newer it is though the harder due to tinier traces and thinner boards. I'm not setup for surface mount but from what I could see these clusters are all through-hole.

Then again, I might just have someone else do it. I'm also doing a Hellcat 6 piston Brembo/15.4" rotor upgrade on the 300 so that's slated for my next days off...

Richard

Well You have to use a solder pump to remove the solder from the motor wants you heat it up. Look it up on You Tube There is a few videos showing guys doing it.

Some are better than others at it... :sunot:

If I was closer, I would help you out. I have everything. Unfortunately Shipping things has been retarded lately...

Oh no, trust me, I work on crap like this for "fun" :)

http://www.someotherplace.com/forum/bk2kbkbox.jpg

That's the guts inside a classic pinball machine - I work on 'em including at board level.

Richard