An acquaintance of mine (not club member)has a problem with his dash. The mileage and gas gage work but the speed, tach and temp do not. He was told he had to replace the entire cluster.

Is this true or is there something else we can check? He bought his 2001 SE used.

This problem ususally occurs with the circuit board that controls the dash gauges. On occassions, my mileage would shut off too. I had mine replaced 4 years ago and still going strong.

My dealer had to replace that part because of having the mileage programmed onto the new chip which is located on that board.

The FSM does state that the whole cluster has to be changed as a single unit. The FSM calls it the Unified Control Meter (UCM).

The tach and temp signals do however go into the UCM on adjacent pins (33 & 34 respectively). Since they are next to each other its possible that the connector has become loose or the terminals have become corroded. Also, I looked at the connector pin-out in the FSM and 33/34 are near the side end of the connector which increases the probability that its a bad connection if one side of the connector has wiggled loose. And that is possible...I'm an electrical engineer and I encounter this kind of thing happening on occassion on military connectors which are generally better made than auto grade)

I believe these connections are a pain to get to, so I'd have the dealership tech do this. . So he might as well pay the labor to have the dealership get to the cluster and clean the contacts really good and see if that fixes the problem. If it doesn't he's really not out anything since he'd have to pay for pretty much the same labor if he just told them to replace the unit straight up. And I'm not sure but I imagine those things are pricey.

Good luck