cgperry

Hi gang! Had the car out for a great drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway last weekend, but about halfway through most of my instrument cluster died. All gauges except the voltmeter are dead, including the Driver Information Center. The ABS light and the Check Engine light are on, although the car didn't have any driveability issues.

I checked the 5A instrument panel fuse and it is good. Any other easy (or not so easy) things to check? I had hoped to take the car up to the Sharks In the Mountain meet Saturday since Banner Elk is only a couple of hours from my NC house, but with no fuel gauge and no odometer I'd be doing a good bit of cell phone math to make sure I had fuel to get there and do the mountain drive.

I did search the archives but didn't see anything directly applicable, and I don't know how different the GTS is from earlier versions for the IP.

Thanks!

Rob Edwards

Has the gauge cluster ever been out of the car before? The best-case / trivial explanation is that one of the connectors is incompletely latched and the connector is partially not making contact. Unlikely but worth checking-

https://rennlist.com/forums/928-foru...-ok-price.html

cgperry

Thanks, Rob! Yes, the cluster was out back in December when my local independent Porsche place removed it to replace a couple of bulbs that were out. It's entirely possible that something didn't get tightly seated on the reinstallation. Thanks for your detailed post on the cluster removal. Hopefully I'll have some time tomorrow to try that.

Schocki

The four connectors in the back are locked into place by little legs. Each connector uses two legs.

slownrusty

On my previous S4 ('87) when I bought it half the gauges were DOA, low and behold it looked like someone was monkeying with the gauge cluster at some time and never properly slid the harness plug properly over the printer circuit board connector nor did they lock it in place with the two (2) legs, after securing it, low and behold everything sprung back to life.

FredR

The connectors are awful things to get back into place as one is working blind when fitting them or at least I was. Quite easy to visual how one of them might "pop off" sooner or later if they were not fully secured. Whether it would explain the extent of loss is another matter.

Dads928

Mine used to die like that when I hit a hard bump. Discovered a break in the ribbon cable that joins the two boards together. But it could be that or the pin connections when reassembling the cluster after bulb replacement.

cgperry

No luck. Looked like all the gauge cluster harnesses were seated correctly. I disconnected and reseated them just to be sure, but no change in my issue. While the cluster was out I opened it up and looked for visible damage to the circuit board or internal connectors. Nothing obvious. Any other ideas?

Rob Edwards

Just to make sure- which fuse number did you check? Alan's fuse and relay chart for US model GTSs has a 7.5 amp (not 5 amp, hence the question) fuse in position #25 for the gauge cluster.

https://webfiles.uci.edu/redwards/pu...01992-1995.pdf

cgperry

Thanks! My fuse chart shows #39 (5A) as the instrument panel. I'll go check #25.

cgperry

$#@#$!! Rob wins the internet today. Fuse 25 was blown. Replaced it and everything is working again. My fuse chart (attached) is clearly for an older model than the GTS? 39 does show as instruments in this chart.

I'm guessing the previous owner may have had an issue with this circuit. The fuse I took out of slot 25 was a 15-amp, not the 7.5-amp that Rob's chart showed. I didn't have any 7.5s here so I replaced it with a 10 until I can get to the auto parts store, but this feels like one of those situations where the previous owner thought the right answer to a circuit blowing fuses was a bigger fuse. Ugh.

At any rate, this should get me through my Sharks trip tomorrow, so thank you Rob!! Really appreciate your time and I'll dig into this circuit more deeply later. Now to go see if I can reassemble the dash... :-)

Rob Edwards

That'll be $0, payable to Rennlist.

Alan

Fuse #24 also controls the interior lights (on a GTS - it varies by year) - so its likely a fault on the interior lights blew the fuse previously. Given what you found I'd check all the other fuse values too.

Alan