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ryan9305's avatar

I am having some car problems. Any advice?

Asked by ryan9305 (297points) December 24th, 2010

I have a 2000 chevy cavalier and the other day all of my gauges stopped working. So therefore i don’t have a speedometer, gas gauge, or temp gauge. Plus my odometer is staying at the same mileage and not going up at all. What is wrong and how do i fix this problem.

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8 Answers

filmfann's avatar

You probably blew a fuse. You can replace it easily enough, but it probably blew for a reason. You can spend $5 on a fuse, then see if it blows again. If it does, you will need to have a professional look at it.

Fred931's avatar

If you haven’t done anything with cars, let this be your first time: For some reason, fuses are something that the owner’s manuals go into real detail about, in terms of replacements. It should tell you where all your car’s fuse boxes are, which one is for the gauges, what kind of fuse to get, and how to replace the blown one with a new one, though that is usually as easy as “pull out, push in.”

ryan9305's avatar

I have actually tested all the fuses and they are all good. Any other ideas?

Fred931's avatar

Something in the wiring in the dash might’ve sent everything into a spiral; you can try exploratoring back there for obvious clues, but I can’t find instructions through rapid Googling. Best have a mechanic open it up for you.

OR I can send this Q to jerv. Yeah, I’ll do that…

john65pennington's avatar

Take your car to AutoZone and explain the situation. they can use their mini computer to test for your problem. its free.

LuckyGuy's avatar

Advance Auto will also plug in their code reader for free. I’d still check the “Dash” fuse. How did you test them? . Did you take it out and look? Don’t use an ohm meter in place.
Did you have anything plugged into the cigarette lighter whe it stopped?

ryan9305's avatar

@worriedguy I have a tester with a light on it and you just touch the leads to the metal parts on the outside of the fuse and it lights up if it is good and doesn’t if it is bad. But i also took most of them out and looked at them as well. Including the dash one. And no i did not have anything plugged into the cigarette lighter when it stopped. I was driving down the road and just lost everything on the dash so when i stopped i thought something might have came loose and so i checked all the connections underneath the dash and all of them were good and tight.

@john65pennington I took it to autozone and had them plug there diagnostics kit into it and it said there was like five things wrong that obviously weren’t wrong. So yeah needless to say i am still really confused about all this.

jerv's avatar

If the fuses are good and the connections (wiring harness et al…) are good then the possibilities that spring to mind immediately are the instrument cluster itself and the ECU, most likely the former.

I wonder what sort of trouble codes it did find though…

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