So yesterday me and a friend swapped out the gauge clusters and now the Temp gauge and Gasoline gauges just move across the whole gauge (pegging out).
My friend is telling me there is probably a electrical problem some where.
For now we unplugged the sending unit for the Temp gauge and Gasoline gauge so they actual gauge does not get messed up by pegging out every time the car turns one. !
You did the right thing disconnecting the gauges, because they will both be destroyed if they are left pegging out for a while.
What you are calling the sending unit for the Temp gauge and Gas gauges may be the voltage limiter. It's usually plugged into the instrument cluster.
The problem is apparently that your voltage limiter has died. That limiter has a bi-metallic strip that continuously makes and breaks contact with the 12v from the electrical system. Eventually, the limiter wears out and the output of the limiter becomes a continuous 12v instead of a stream of 12v pulses. The gauges can't handle the higher voltage and peg out. Pretty soon, the gauges themselves burn out and read nothing. At that point, all you can do is replace the regulator and the gauges (temp and fuel).
When this happened to me, I bought two instrument clusters (for the temp and gas of gauges) before I figured out what was happening.
If that part is what you are talking about we swapped them out between both clusters to see if we get another result.
They both did the same thing.
Either both of the limiters are bad or something else is wrong.
It makes sense that both limiters are bad. Because of the nature of the design, they won't last forever. They are so old now that they have all lived past their estimated lifetimes.
Thank your lucky stars that you disconnected the power to the gauges before they were destroyed. You did good! I didn't do that and it cost me a lot of money, time and frustration.
I'm an electronics tech and made the Radio Shack homemade substitute that I found on a Chrysler Imperial website. After experiencing the annoying inaccuracy of it, I finally sprung for the electronic version that RTE sells. It took me a year of frustration to convince me to spend the money for it, but I've never had to think about the gauges since then.
I've been able to move on to other problems the car has and continue with the learning and fun.
The NTE site has a chart that lists the problems with the Radio Shack version, and I can tell you they are accurate.
Sorry for the long post, but I dealt with the same problem for almost two years before finally solving it. I don't want others out there do go through what I did.
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