How do you fix a frozen speedometer?

[Julian Rorick]

I have a 2004 silverado, I live in north eastern british columbia and i made the mistake of taking my truck thru a touchless car wash in -15 C . now my speedo is frozen on 60 so when i go down the highway it says im doing over 200 and some times my oil pressure gage goes way up and doesnt come down , any idea where to start on such a problem ?

[Crummy]

Wait till July.

[Julian Rorick]

your prolly right cause when it warmed up the other day it went back to normel, but do you think there could be damaged parts ? has anyone else had this problem. I with i could warrenty it but its to late

[Crummy]

Just keep an eye out for leaks. It should be ok. May have just been a flash freeze.

[PHAT 53]

Yes there is a problem with the gauge clusters on GM cars and trucks from about 1995 and up. As far as I could tell there is no recall. I would add that the problem is not only with GM but most other cars that have electronic dashes. The fix is to have your gauge cluster rebuilt. I have a 2003 Chevy Silverado. My gas gauge just went out. Every time I turned on the key the gauge would go about a ¼ of an inch farther clockwise. My shop checked it out with their plug in computer to check codes and do diagnostic check on the truck. During the check the plug in computer cycles the gauges, my gas gauge would not cycle. But the computer said that my gas tank was 45% full of fuel. That told us that the gas gauge was bad. According to the blogs on the Internet the two most common gauges to fail are the speedometer and the gas gauge.

Now we come to the bad news. Through the Chevy dealer here in Tucson it’s about $550.00 to send the gauge cluster off a get it rebuilt. Plus about $100.00 to pull it out and reinstall it. The price was the same at the repair shop that I use. Again according to the blogs on the Internet that’s the common price everywhere.

Now for the not great news, but almost good news. As I searched the Internet for information after about 8 hours I found Tom Jeroski at Mr. Whizard Technical Services (yes I know he has an h in wizard it must be the way they spell it in Canada) www.mrwhizard.com/ Toll Free 1 888 803 8523. Tom does flat rate repairs for most electronic gauge clusters. I sent my gauge cluster Mr. Whizard with his supplied prepaid UPS label, which is covered in this flat rate price. Yes that’s right shipping is covered both ways for UPS ground. The only small problem is that it takes two weeks for the round trip. But again the good news is that the truck will run and drive with out the gauge cluster.

On the Mr. Whizard website you will find instructions on how to remove your gauge cluster. I was able to unsnap the dash trim (one piece) and pull my gauge cluster out (the cluster is held in with four 7 mm screws) and put back the dash part in under15 minutes. It was a snap to say the least. lol

The flat rate for my 2003 Chevy Silverado truck was $169.00 US. Tom lives in Canada so you will see an exchange rate thing on your credit card but it still comes down to $169.00 US. By the way Tom did both my gas gauge motor and my speedometer motor for the one flat rate charge. Tom said he likes to replaces the GM speedometer motor because they fail so often.

I put the gauge cluster in today and it works great. Saved $381.00 to 481.00 depending on whether you do the work yourself or not. Now I can go get that GPS unit I wanted.

[ezernut9mm]

wow. good info phat!