I am the owner of a 1995 Dodge Neon Coupe DOHC with auto transmission. Recently I have been having problems with my instrument panel. Since owning the car, I've been through three clusters; each works for several months and then nothing. The panel i'm using now works off and on, kicking up or out only when I run over a large bump or pothole. Sometimes hitting the dashboard directly over the instrument panel solves the problem as well.Only the speedometer seems to quit working, my temperature and gas gauges run fine. Any ideas on what could be wrong with it?

 

Max,

You may be experiencing the bad (cold solder) joint problem that oh so many Neons experienced. The following link shows not only where to easily fix it, but how. All you need is a $5 soldering iron from Radio Snack (Shack - aka the Hut aka Nerds R Us).

https://dodgeforum.com/forum/1st-gen...er-repair.html

 

I removed the instrument panel from my car, but the circuit board looks slightly different from the one in the picture. While i had it apart, i checked over all connections and it doesn't look like any of them are broken or cracked. Any more suggestions?

 

The "cracks" themselves sometimes are not very noticeable. In fact, a bad "cold solder" joint can sometimes appear OK, but will give you fits until you reflow it.

Some have suggested that you can bend the pins, but that really only provides a temporary fix as once the pins vibrate enough to work loose again, the same problems will appear - again.

Just try resoldering the connectors that was mentioned in the article. All you have to do is place the tip on the pin until you see it change color and maybe even shift a tiny amount. What this does is it turns the solder back into a semi-liquid state enough to "flow" back into any crevices that you may not even be able to see and will then re-harden quickly.

It only takes a few minutes, and since you have it out anyway (and it is "bad") you really cannot do any damage here. If it works, you're golden!

 

Just remember, these circuit boards are sandwiches of insulating material with wire "channels" etched in. The circuits cross various layers connecting these channels, and the solder anchors them in place. They bend and flex with time and temperature changes. Add in vibrations and shock, and it is amazing that any circuit board lasts at all in a car!

A good board cold may act ***** when the car warms up - and vise versa. A really bad board just don't work - period. Some can be fixed, some cannot. Those are far better then "sorta works" anyday.

 

My 95 done the same, all instrument panel would go dead so I done the resoldering the connectors thing and every thing worked fine for awhile, then only the speedometer would act up or not work at all, I replaced the speed sensor on the trans. and it has worked fine for 6 weeks or so. Might be worth a try.

 

1998 sport with the 2.0. its my girls car i dont know much about it, the rpms stay high 6 and up all the time but when i drive it moves from 6 and up even if i shut off the car the needle drops but it drops the wrong way so it goes to like 8 any help, thank you

 

If all the other guages and warning lights are working fine, and that is the only one acting bad, then most likely it is the guages' potentiometer (aka resistor "pot") going bad. It could also be a case where the solder joint is going bad, but usually that gives no readings during the time it is ***** and does not "rest" at 8K. All this assumes that the guage was working fine at some point.

I just installed my "new" cluster, and while everything worked fine on the old one, the new one has a tachometer, but the temperature guage is non-functional at this time. I put the old one back in, and it showed the correct temperature immediately (I had just finished going for a run, so the car was still good and warmed up), so I am going to change out the temp pot from my old cluster with this one and see if it makes a difference.

I am also going to open up a new thread to see if anyone knows the proper resistance a good "pot" is supposed to show on a multimeter and which how I am supposed to check it as it has 4 "posts" that connect to the circuit board, so which ones do I check and when....