The wife and I found an '03 Suburban that seems to be in decent shape, but it has one troubling problem. None of the gauges work. NONE.
Is this a common problem?
Has anyone had this issue and if so, was it an easy fix, a.k.a. fuse?
I was pretty much sold on this truck until I started it and saw that not a single, solitary gauge was feeding me any pertinent information. Now I'm more than a bit worried and this has me questioning the care given to other parts of the vehicle.
Needs the cluster repaired or replaced. You can try a used one, or pull it out and send it in to get repaired for a couple hundred dollars.
That's a bummer.
Maybe we can turn this to our advantage and use it for bargaining leverage.
Did the odometer work? It may raise questions about actual vs. reported mileage if not.
If I remember there was a TSB and a (recall?, not sure there) for some '03-'04 trucks and Suburbans. Definitely worth looking into tho. I think a Delco reman cluster is around $300 from the dealer, or try a JY unit. Check fuses first, I think there's one fuse for the IC, radio and heater controls.
In reply to MitchellC:
The wife just brought it to the house for an extended test drive and odometer is the only thing that works. Even the gear selector...thingy...refuses to end the strike. She also reports a "whine" under acceleration. I'll have more info in a bit.
The steering/ front suspension feels bent and broken, it pulls to the left, has 10-15 degrees of play in the steering and emits that familiar sickly-sweet stench of leaking coolant. Buh-Bye!
You just can't swap clusters between vehicles. And no you can't reprogram them either. You will end up with a CEL that you can never get rid of. If you really are wanting to buy it, have the repair included in the deal or no sale.
Depending on the area of the whine and its pitch, I would suspect a trans pump. Same thing as before, fix, split costs maybe, or no deal.
Needs a intermediate steering shaft, tires and alignment, and probably has a leaking water pump gasket on the passenger side.
This was going to be a hit-the-key-and-go family car so we're passing on this one.
I know the speedo gauge is well known to go out... GM would replace them till 80k... after that you pay... or use a GPS (a friend is now using the GPS because her husband drove 2k miles over a weekend pushing her over the 80k limit... she planned to have it serviced that monday lol)
donalson wrote: I know the speedo gauge is well known to go out... GM would replace them till 80k... after that you pay... or use a GPS (a friend is now using the GPS because her husband drove 2k miles over a weekend pushing her over the 80k limit... she planned to have it serviced that monday lol)
Too bad. GM would still cover it even if over mileage by a bit. Just have to work the system to get it covered. I was WAY over on mine, like 7 or 8k, and still got it covered. Helped I was working at a GM dealer at the time, but I still had to jump through the warranty claims process.
Just because a part fails 1 mile over the warranty, doesn't immediately mean you are out of warranty......
Yeah, this one had 140k, so well out of range for the tsb.
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