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Speedo Needle dragging or something 98 MC


Torque_Effect

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Well after figuring out that my 98' Monte has a "change oil soon" light system, but never seen it working I pulled apart the dash cluster to see if the bulb was blown, found out GM never installed the bulb for it, or for the security light, and there was a couple other holes they could have friggin' used for a cruise control light, but go figure it didn't even have the anything on the faceplate for those holes.

 

Excuse my rant, first GM product and things are already irritating the crap out of me.

 

Well after swapping the volt light bulb over to the "chg oil soon" light to see if it would work, and finding out it fully worked and was able to reset the oil change system.

 

Put it all back together, drove it around the block to make sure everything worked, and the speedo is slow to get up to the proper speed, the needle acts like it's catching on something and jumps until it gets to the proper speed, same thing for deceleration. Will be sitting at a dead stop and it will still read 10-20MPH until it catches up. What's wrong here? Tried playing around with the needle while the plexiglass was off to see if I could get it to smooth out, but no amount of fiddling with it made any difference.

 

I really don't want to hear the words. "Replace the cluster"

 

EDIT:

 

Ignore the dumbass lol

 

aparently when taking the cluster out, it fell forward and pushed the need far enough in for the base to drag on the faceplate. Went out to get some dinner, and at a stoplight I grabbed the base of the needle gently and pulled it ever so slightly away from the faceplate and it is working fine again.

 

I still wonder why there was never any bulb installed for the Security and Oil Change lights though. Must have been built on a friday. lol

Edited by Torque_Effect
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i can guarantee that those bulbs were installed at one point but someone else took them out.

 

people love to pull the ABS and low coolant bulb as well.

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Hmmm weird.

 

Well I can see why the Security light would have been pulled, since it wouldn't go out when I tried it. So I wouldn't be surprised if someone bypassed the passkey system.

 

But the Chg Oil light seems to be just fine, maybe someone didn't like the short OCIs because they were running Mobile 1 EP and wanting to get 10k miles out of the oil without being nagged to change it.

I know that is what my friend put in it shortly before he sold it to me, but he said he never saw the oil change light at all and didn't even know it had one, so someone who owned it before him did it.

He bought it off a used car lot so who knows what has happened to it.

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The clusters in both my 97 montes are missing a few bulbs....mainly for stuff i deleted like abs/tcs, airbags etc. Still has low cool and change oil lite tho

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someone probably didn't know about the reset procedure, so they pulled the bulb instead.

 

Seems a bit silly when they had the owner's manual in the glovebox.

Granted I did think the reset procedure at first was a button in a fuse panel, but couldn't find such a button. lol

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i can guarantee that those bulbs were installed at one point but someone else took them out.

 

people love to pull the ABS and low coolant bulb as well.

 

Guilty.:redface: Prior to the sale of the of my '92 Z, I finally pulled the ABS light bulb as the ABS never worked and I figured that generation of ABS sucked anyway. Also, the Low Coolant light would randomly pop on every few months, despite the confirmation of a full the to the brim radiator (car never lost coolant the whole time I owned it) So, I unplugged the sensor a little bit since (of course) the light came on the day I was supposed to sell it. Oh well. It's not like it actually had a problem aside from a glitchy sensor/ wiring.

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the coolant level sensors in a 1/1.5 W radiator are super prone to failure, so it never surprises me to see them unplugged or the bulb missing from the cluster, or the bulb still in the cluster but lit up, or even the bulb still in the cluster but has been on for so long it burnt out and the board around it is a dark brown from the heat.

 

seatbelt warning lamps, and on the GP clusters the check gauges/low fuel lamps, tend to end up the same way.

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