Bulldog8

Coby7, thanks for the reply. PM sent for repair information.

I have a 2003, 1500 Silverado with battery and instrument cluster problems. I checked my VIN and my truck is not covered in the instrument cluster recall. Issues with both seem to be all over the internet, but I wanted some more insight before throwing parts at it. 1. In cold weather the battery will drain to almost completely dead in 3 days and in the summer it start after 5 days of no use, but no longer. 2. Once the battery is dead, connecting the charger or jumper cables will cause the truck to go into panic mode and the horn will sound the panic beeps until hitting the key fob to turn it off. 3. I had a gauge stepper motor problem a few years ago and the stepper motors were all replaced by GMGaugeGuy.com. (the battery drain may have started around this time, but I don't remember which happened first) My instrument cluster has a tach, Speedo, fuel, battery, oil press, and coolant temp gauge. 4. Yesterday when I started the truck all of the gauges stayed off and the LED display portion of the cluster was lit, but wasn't displaying information. (the bottom half of the LED display had all fields lit and the top portion was off) I disconnected the battery ground for about 30 minutes, reconnected and had the same dead cluster. I then followed one of the youtube guides that showed how many people found loose resistors. I disassembled the cluster and was getting ready to test for loose parts. When I connected the cluster harness (ignition key off) The stepper motors powered and moved the gauges to the "zero" position. When I turned the key to "on" the gauges and LED worked normal without me doing the eraser press test on any of the parts. I poked around at the connections and everything stayed powered up. I then re-assembled the cluster and drove the truck to work today with no issues. I'm tired of kicking this problem down the road and don't mind to replace the cluster but am not sure if it's truly a cluster issue or a power to the cluster issue. I attempted to use my DVM to test for current draw but it seems like whatever is causing the issue powers down when I disconnect the negative battery cable to put the meter in line. Does anyone have any troubleshooting suggestions?