My 98 Neon just started having a power hiccup. While driving down the road the gauges will act like the car was turned off and tehn jump back to where they where and my setbelt light will stayon for a few more seconds. Anybody have a clue what is going on?

 

yup.

reflow your cold weld joints. the ones circled

 

I had the same problem with mine but when the guages did that sometimes it would shut off and not start.I had to fix the grounds on my battery. Hope this helps

 

Bone33 i'm not sure what you are talking about. Riceboy thanks for your input. What is the cost to repair both seperately?

 

Free

This is pretty simple and can be done by anyone who has some kind of gauge problem and a soldering iron.

Remove your gauges/cluster: Pop the upper part of your dash off. There are no screws, it just pops straight up and out. Put it in your back seat. The cluster had 4 screws holding it in. The hardest screw to reach is the bottom left screw. I used an offset screwdriver to reach it. Once those are out, the cluster just pops out. You don't have to worry about unhooking anything.

Flip your cluster over. Remove the paper protector from the cluster. The screws are #15 Torx head screws. Once the paper is removed, remove ALL of the remaining screws. I believe there are 9 of them, also #15 Torx head. You don't have to remove the bulbs. Disconnect the 4-pin ribbon cable. Slowly and carefully work the circuit board off of the pins. Try not to crack the circuit board. Once you break the board, this little job is done and you'll have to find a new cluster.

Once you have the circuit board loose, flip it over and heat up your soldering iron. The points you need to reflow are the 20 joints in the red ovals: SEE MY PIC

Set you hot soldering iron onto the very top of the soldering joints. There is probably a wire nib sticking out of the solder. Use that. Watch the solder, it will appear to change color. That's all. It won't move or anything, just change color. Don't add any solder to it. Make sure it changes color all the way down. Set the circuit board off to the side for a few minutes to allow it to cool, the reassemble it the opposite of disassembly.

You've just successfully reflowed the cold solder joints in your cluster, and you shouldn't have anymore jumping gauges. If your gauges continue to jump or flicker, then you've A) found a way to screw this up or B) have a cracked circuit board and you need to replace the entire cluster.

 

I have talked with a mechanic and after describing the problem to him he said it's a electrical problem and that I more than likely have a ground wire that worked it's self loose. I got a appointment with him to to begin to try and figure where the loose wire is at.

 

ok, and when the mechanic is done, after you have paid him hundereds of dollars and its not fixed you can try this. let us know how much you get screwed out of.

 

Hey genius, the mechanic solved my problem and it only cost me $1.99 and here was wa the culprit.Thanks for the input, glad i didn't listen to you.

 

Don't you just love it when poeple try to talk you down but then again that was a high bill. Did you have to take out a loan. DUH HUH
Glad you got it fixed and cheap

 

Yea, i had to take out a 2nd mortage to cover the cost