Lefteye

I need your advice. I had a bad cluster board which I exchanged for a used one. My bad board could not display the odometer and trip meter. The new (used) one did. However, the replacement board had some missing gauge lights. I tried to replace the lights and in the process bricked the temperature gauge. So I have my odometer showing but my temp gauge goes not move. I am looking for a new board to replace the one with the bad temp gauge. The advice I need is should I switch back to the board without the odometer readout with good temp gauge or should I keep using the one with the bad temp gauge until I can find a replacement gauge cluster?
Thanks.

97_RLer

You can simply swap the bad temp & fuel gauge with your original working temp & fuel gauge. It should work with no problem at all. You don't need to buy any other instrument cluster assembly. FYI, DO NOT mix three different types of screws on the board and DO NOT overtighten or loose tighten the screws. I guess you might already learn it by error and trial!

Ken1997TL

I made the mistake of losing a screw and using a different one.

Well that turned out 'well' because the screws conduct electricity and I'm guessing the impedence was wrong on the replacement, meaning my engine temperature appeared to never leave C.

I have since fixed this..

sr4dt

If nothing else works, as an alternate, you could use a ScanguageII which can display the temparature in numeric units as opposed to the scale displayed on the guage.

In addition you could also read several other information obtained via OBDII port.

Lefteye

97_Rler

I swapped the board into my original cluster and still have the same problem. This is why I concluded that the issue is with the board.
The car warms up and drives nicely. What kind of damage am I doing to the engine when the temp gauge does not work?

Ken1997TL

No damage whatsoever.

The engine computer knows what temperature its at and as long as your coolant has been changed in the past couple years you should be fine.