Tach and gauges not working

BlackNoma

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When I got my truck (1898 f350 4x4), none of the gauges worked. At all.

I pulled the cluster and cleaned it up real good with q-tips. Put it back together... Volt meter and fuel started to move around... Not consistent, though.

New speedo cable brought back the speedo.
I rolled the dice on the genuine Ford $60 tach sensor and boom. It's there.

Then the more I drove it, the more the gauges came back to life. Oil pressure and engine temp never came back, but I have after market gauges for these things, and perfer to have real reading anyways. (See oil pressure "readings" of original gauges)

A good gauge connection cleaning never hurts anything, and it's so easy why not?
 

silverrex4

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not to laugh but get ready to chase the old ford electrical gremlins. check all the fuses, and invest in aftermarket gauges, they have cheap ones that work well. autometer makes a great diesel tach and works well with the 6.9, the tach sensors are hit or miss. i bought a few brand new ones right out of the pacakge they didnt work. might jave to buy a genuine ford one. definitely do a search on the fourms this has been discussed before with great diagrams and pictures. let me know how you make out, i would love to have my original tach work perfect every drive. good luck

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Thewespaul

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If you have a lot of gauges acting up, likely the circuit board itself is the issue. You can take the cluster to a specialist and have them test the circuit board. Usually needs a few things resoldered and it works like new.
 

John Preston

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If you have a lot of gauges acting up, likely the circuit board itself is the issue. You can take the cluster to a specialist and have them test the circuit board. Usually needs a few things resoldered and it works like new.
They were all working good one day including tach and oil lite so that leads me to believe it's not the cluster
 
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