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Stepper Motor Replacement

bigbengalbubba

By bigbengalbubba
in Ask A GM Technician

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  • 3 months later...
repairdr New Member

repairdr

Posted
Posted

OK - I tried changing out the Stepper motors in my cluster and uhm what a pain in the ....I reinstalled uhm I made it worse. The fuel gage was bouncing and the temp read too cold. I finally sent the unit in to D&B Auto Radio in Carol Stream, IL. My brother in law told me this is where the local Dealers send in their radios and instrument clusters to get fixed. I was told the repair price at the dealer would be $435 but my brother in law said to go direct to D&B and they wpuld take it in even though I was not from a Dealership. They fixed it for almost half the price and the thing works great.

 

My suggestion to anyone wanting to fix this on your own, DON'T do it!!! So much easier having the guys that know what they are doing fix it.

 

Just my 2 cents..

  • 4 weeks later...
bmwhd New Member

bmwhd

Posted
Posted
OK - I tried changing out the Stepper motors in my cluster and uhm what a pain in the ....I reinstalled uhm I made it worse. The fuel gage was bouncing and the temp read too cold. I finally sent the unit in to D&B Auto Radio in Carol Stream, IL. My brother in law told me this is where the local Dealers send in their radios and instrument clusters to get fixed. I was told the repair price at the dealer would be $435 but my brother in law said to go direct to D&B and they wpuld take it in even though I was not from a Dealership. They fixed it for almost half the price and the thing works great.

 

My suggestion to anyone wanting to fix this on your own, DON'T do it!!! So much easier having the guys that know what they are doing fix it.

 

Just my 2 cents..

 

Well, I have to strongly disagree. I just did all 6 in my '05 Tahoe. Took a total of 30 min and couldn't have been easier. Total out of pocket $27 thanks to eBay and this great thread.

 

I will say that the part about marking the needle position and then putting them back on at 12:00 did not work for me. Several were way off when powered up. However, it was an easy matter to pop them off (with truck running and warmed up) and get them back on correctly.

 

I verified the RPM and Speedo readings using remote tach and GPS. The fuel, oil pressure, volts, and temp took a bit of trial and error but again, no problems at all.

 

I strongly recommend taking a picture of the needle positions with the truck warmed and running both at idle and at 3,000 RPM to get a sense of the correct positions.

  • 1 month later...
BPain New Member

BPain

Posted
Posted

I have the same problem with the cluster, but when mine goes out the odometer goes blank, as well as the gear select display, and lights behind the cluster. Would this be caused by the stepper motors only or would I be facing a larger electrical problem? I can un plug the cluster and sometimes it will start back up or I can tap on it above the fuel guage and the rest will come to life. Please help. Do not want to just throw stuff at it until I find a solution. Thanks All!!!

 

 

 

Blake :thumbs:

  • 1 month later...
lw60 New Member

lw60

Posted
Posted

Replaced the steppe motor for the tach yesterday....took about 45 minutes thanks to the great advice from this site! Here may be a tip to get the guages set correctly: BEFORE you do anything, start the vehicle and let it 'settle down' to it's normal rpms. Then, note the position of all of the guages with as much accuracy as possible. Write down the results. After completing the whole job, start the engine and note the guages....if you did everything correctly, they will all match your previous results (allow for a very slight variation due to engine cooling off a bit). If they are off....then you can go back and adjust ever so slightly. Mine were right on the button so all is well!! :)

Thanks to all!!

  • 4 weeks later...
rino744043 New Member

rino744043

Posted
Posted

:D . Hello all just wanted to let all the GM owners in Houston area know that if your gauges are messed up. Help is here, I am a mobile service, I only use switech steppers no cheap knock-offs I also do the LED conversions. :cheers:

Just e-mail me for contact or check out craigslist my listing have the pic of a blue led cluster.

  • 1 month later...
youtee New Member

youtee

Posted
Posted

Hey guys,

 

I replaced my stepper motors tonight and it was easy, HOWEVER, when I got everything back in, only one of my backlights works. Everything else is dark. A couple of the lights will blink on when I plug up the harness, but then they are out. Any thoughts? The only suspect I have is bad capacitors on the circuit board, but I really don't have a way to prove that.

youtee New Member

youtee

Posted
Posted

Update: Apparently, on an older truck (03) the filaments on the bulbs are worn out. Bumping them around can break them. I pulled out the old tester and all of the leads were getting 12v. I went to radio shack and bought 12v 50mA bulbs and replaced all of them I had to get rid of the little blue holder that the old bulbs were in and solder these directly to the board. THEY WORK!!!! Easy fix, but just make sure you test out the lights BEFORE putting everything back together. A two hour job took me a day and a half with all the testing and internet searching.

Mr Cluster New Member

Mr Cluster

Posted
Posted

I have an 04 chevy z71 with 120K on it. The gas gauge and the speedometer were acting up. I saw this thread and bought the stepper motors and soldered them in yesterday. I tested the instrument cluster and the gauges don't work. Any ideas? Sounded fairly simple to me to fix. I sure don't want to have to send the cluster off to be fixed. Can someone help?

 

I put the needles back on and then rotated counter clockwise to the marks I put on with tape. I noticed that the needles move freely upward as if it isn't engaging the gears in the stepper motors. This was done while the truck was idling.

 

Frustrating.

 

Thanks.

 

 

NEVER move the needles while the cluster is plugged in and it has power to it. If you need to adjust your needles PM me and I can help!

Mr Cluster New Member

Mr Cluster

Posted
Posted

Hey guys,

 

I replaced my stepper motors tonight and it was easy, HOWEVER, when I got everything back in, only one of my backlights works. Everything else is dark. A couple of the lights will blink on when I plug up the harness, but then they are out. Any thoughts? The only suspect I have is bad capacitors on the circuit board, but I really don't have a way to prove that.

 

 

The blue bulb holders are the problem. If you even touch them while you are replacing the motors it will break the solder joint underneath them. Usually the bulbs are still good, you just need to discard the blue bulb holder. It's not the fillament.

Mr Cluster New Member

Mr Cluster

Posted
Posted

I have the same problem with the cluster, but when mine goes out the odometer goes blank, as well as the gear select display, and lights behind the cluster. Would this be caused by the stepper motors only or would I be facing a larger electrical problem? I can un plug the cluster and sometimes it will start back up or I can tap on it above the fuel guage and the rest will come to life. Please help. Do not want to just throw stuff at it until I find a solution. Thanks All!!!

 

 

 

Blake :(

 

There are more problems with your cluster than just bulbs and stepper motors. Your power supply should be updated to repair that issue. Some clusters,depending on the year of the vehicle have up to 5 issues with them. Send me a PM and I can help or check out my other posts. I have rebuilt clusters that have been to 2 or 3 other repair shops because they weren't aware of all the issues with them. Check the back of your cluster to see if there is more than 1 sticker on the back.

  • 1 month later...
  • 3 years later...
Ethan9987 New Member

Ethan9987

Posted
Posted

Hey everyone, new to this group, but hoping for some help. I have a 2004 gmc Sierra 1500... Guages had issues so I decided to replace the stepper motors. Not all of them were broke but I figured since I had it apart I may as well replace them all. Anyway, on the speedometer motor, when I unsoldered it from the board, the solder pad fell off. I didn't think much of it until I tried to solder the new motor onto the board. I tried to follow that ribbon back to another solder on the board, but couldn't do that. I used a small screwdriver and kinda scraped along the edge of the ribbon that was running to that solder post, I was able to get a piece of that ribbon up and tried to solder it to that, but it just melted the ribbon wire. So without the 4th post soldered to the board, the speedometer won't work. It moves but it's all over yh3 place and won't go back to 0 when I shut it off or stop. Does anyone have any idea of this is fixable? I thought maybe there would be a way to run a wire from the post where the pad fell off, and hook it to the same post on another stepper motor, but that might be stupid! Any advice or help would be appreciated. Thanks you

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