The speedometer and tach on my 03 3500 stick. That is they will go up - stick, then go up as speed increases. As I reduce speed they will drop and stick and sometimes neither will return to zero when the engine is turned off. Sometimes they behave fine. If I bump the dash as I go down the road (drives my wife nuts!) I can get the needles to move some.
Should I take the instrument panel out and try cleaning the connectors or what?? Time to replace? Or is the problem somewhere else in the electrics?
Thanks
Ron

 

Probably a new cluster time. Have you tested the cluster? Hold down the trip meter reset button and turn the key to the on position and release.

 

Tried that. Didn't make any difference.
So where can I find pictorial help with removing the instrument panel?
Thanks for the reply.
Ron

 

It won't make a difference but it should show codes on what is wrong in the cluster. They will come up in the odo window.

 

Thanks
Youtube has a number of similar problems being corrected by "reflowing" the solder on two chips - since I have done a lot of fine soldering I'm going to give that a try and clean all the contacts on the connectors as well. What can it hurt at this point

 

OK, I pulled out the instrument panel (not as hard as I thought) I did three things: 1:cleaned all the electrical contacts. 2:"Refload" the solder on the chips that are supposed to control the tack and maybe the speedometer. I would not recommend this if you have never done any fine electrical soldering.
3:Then I discovered that the needles on both tach and speedo were pressed very close to the gauge faces and caused them to hang up when I moved the panel around to see how freely the needles would move - and they did hang up! So I pried the needles very gently a very small distance away from the gauge face. Now they moved freely. Now I don't think this would account for why the gauges worked at times but mostly not. So the contact cleaning and solder work could have been the fix
Put it all back in the truck and the tach worked perfectly - have not had a chance to go out and try the speedo but I'm thinking I may have found the problem. I'm also wondering if this gauge cluster has been worked on before. The miles on the odo did match up with the vin report so at least I know I didn't get taken on that count. Also: because these gauges would work fine for a while and then act up again I won't really know if I have gotten a resolution or not. Next week we hit the road and I'll get a chance to see if this really worked or if I'm going to be frustrated again. We live in a remote village in AK and don't get out on the highway without having to put the vehicle on the ferry and hauling it up to the mainland. I'll try to provide an update. Here's hoping!

Ron