Blew up my dash

[RapidMax]

Yesterday, was -10F when starting up. Took several efforts. Somehow all of my dash guages (e.g. speedo, tach, tranny temp, oil pressure, engine temp) stopped working. The don't do anything. All the idiot lights still come on and the Driver's Information Center still works. I couldn't figure any fuse that would blow producing the above effect. I took it to the dealer and they are putting in a new guage panel. The brand-new truck (has <4K miles now) was a dealer trade and the other dealer had installed some sort of additional ignition lock with a little plastic key that you can take out to disable. My dealer thinks this might have been related to the problem.

Anyone else experience something like this?

[mdrag]

Transferred to 2500HD/3500 HD Trucks & Drivetrain forum.

mdrag

[JimWilson]

Am ignition lock blowing up all the guages? Sounds a bit fishy to me. Somehow I doubt it...

[RapidMax]

I'd have to agree that it sounds fishy. But something caused all the gauges to quit. It seemed like an electrical problem. I'm curious if anyone else has had something like this -- especially without the additional ignition locked wired into it. I wasn't real happy about getting stuck with this dealer trade in the first place (it wasn't what we'd agreed on) and now I'm getting less happy.

[Lone Eagle]

All my dash gauges are on one fuse. All the dash gauge lights are on one fuse. I also taped into them to power my boost and egt gauges. All these work off the dash light dimmer switch. Later! Lone Eagle

[BD]

Thought I would see if anything has developed on this as my new truck seems to have a similar problem. We picked up the 2003 2500HD D/A truck last Friday. Drove it a 100 miles to Bakersfield and parked it. Sunday when I was getting ready to leave - started it up and no guages. Drove it (seemed a little down on power) to the local station to fillup before the trip home and shut it down - and when I restarted it the guages worked and everything was back to normal. It has happened 3 other times when fired off the first time of the day - first start up no guages - shut it off and restart and everything is fine. I even tried waiting till all of the instrument checkout lights (airbag,etc) go off - still happens. Outside of this and getting the "Service 4WD" once on the DIC the truck has run fine.
Any ideas?
Bill

[RapidMax]

Bill:

No real news. Unlike yours, my gauges didn't start sorking on their own. The dealer looked at it and said there was signal getting to the gauges but they weren't doing anything. Again, it was just the dial gauges that were out -- all the idiot lights and DIC were working.

They ended up replacing the panel and pulling out that add-on ignition interlock (again, not sure if that was related to the problem -- do you have one?).

After the fix, works fine. In fact, I'm 99% sure I'm imagining it, but the truck seems to be running better. The only issue is that the oil pressure gauge seems to read WAY high -- e.g. pegs at 120 under moderate load. See:

http://forum.thedieselpage.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=004731

I've got to get that into the dealer for a look-see.

In general, I luv the truck, but little issues like this bug me, because there's lots I want to add on, but if things keep popping up I'll get into that "you're aftermarket item caused this..."