Odometer/gear Selector Lights Out On 99 Silverado

rph74 · October 17, 2009

The odometer/gear selector lights on the instrument cluster appear to be going on the fritz. Sometimes they are completely off, and sometimes they work perfectly. Does anyone know of a place that repairs these things?

I found replacement clusters on E-bay. Would that be plug and play, or would a dealer have to program it to reflect the correct mileage?

dlstewart01 · October 17, 2009

The odometer/gear selector lights on the instrument cluster appear to be going on the fritz. Sometimes they are completely off, and sometimes they work perfectly. Does anyone know of a place that repairs these things?

I found replacement clusters on E-bay. Would that be plug and play, or would a dealer have to program it to reflect the correct mileage?

It will have to be a 99. They are unique in the airbag programming. If you put a newer cluster in, it will work but the airbag light will be on.

The miles in a full size truck are kept only in the cluster, not in the computer. Yes they can be reprogrammed. some dealers will, some wont. There are people on Ebay that will programm miles for you. They donot need your truck to do this, they only need the cluster.

rph74 · October 17, 2009

Thanks for that info! In the meantime, I have found a place (Mr. Whizard.com) that specializes in this type of repair. They want $169 including shipping to repair it. But the turnaround for me would be 7-8 days. Buying an e-bay cluster would be a bit cheaper, and give me zero downtime for the truck. But the durability would be unknown. Decisions, decisions..

RambOOlio · July 31, 2010

The problem seems to be "cold soldering". A term used in electronics when not enough solder is used or solder was placed too quickly on PC board for electronic components to solder down. Here is a website I found with directions for this - including step-by-step photo instructions. I'm going to attempt to fix my '99 Z71 tomorrow. http://mrfixit.webnode.com//

rph74 · November 30, 2010

The problem seems to be "cold soldering". A term used in electronics when not enough solder is used or solder was placed too quickly on PC board for electronic components to solder down. Here is a website I found with directions for this - including step-by-step photo instructions. I'm going to attempt to fix my '99 Z71 tomorrow. http://mrfixit.webnode.com//

Thank you so much for posting this! Last week I finally got around to pulling the cluster. I had a local electronics repair shop do the job for me for $30. Money well spent. Works like a charm!

You just saved me 140 bucks!