Voltage meter trouble

[Carl12117]

My voltage meter drops to 0 and battery light comes on yet when tested the alternator is charging. I put in new alternator, belts, and tensioner and battery can't figure out why the meter still drops to 0

[davester]

An intermittent connection or broken wire somewhere?  Depending on where the problem is, the problem may generate a code (you may need a more advanced code reader to read it).

[Formulabruce]

when automotive manufacturing got away from Lead solder, the low melt replacement caused some cold solder joints after some years. This is most likely your problem in the cluster. It could also be the stepper motor itself. I have changed about 40 of these and re soldered about 60 clusters. GM used to have a replacement rebuild program many years ago for these type of problems.

 Now you can trade your cluster on ebay to a guy for one of his plus a couple hundred bucks, you send him your vin and mileage.

 Good luck!

[dsr611]

3 hours ago, Formulabruce said:

when automotive manufacturing got away from Lead solder, the low melt replacement caused some cold solder joints after some years. This is most likely your problem in the cluster. It could also be the stepper motor itself. I have changed about 40 of these and re soldered about 60 clusters. GM used to have a replacement rebuild program many years ago for these type of problems.

 Now you can trade your cluster on ebay to a guy for one of his plus a couple hundred bucks, you send him your vin and mileage.

 Good luck!

Cluster was my thinking also (I don't know if there is an actual "voltage sensor" that would cause the light to come on or if it's based on gauge position. )

[davester]

It's all data on '05, the light isn't based on the physical location of the indicator, and the gauge isn't analog.  If the light is on, and the voltage reads zero, that really points to whatever computer that does the actual reading (the ecm I believe) says it's zero/low, for whatever reason...

 

But it's either buy/borrow the tools to figure out what's wrong, or throw parts at the truck...