99 blazer cluster issues
 

Good afternoon,

I have been reading threads assuming this would be something that had been gone over 100 times, but I'm reluctant to find anything. My blazer had been sitting for a while because I bought a civic for a static project. (to have something that sits high and something else that sits low) I finally got time to step away from the honda and found an issue with the Blazer. The oil pressure guage and voltmeter on my cluster work but nothing else does. (speedometer, odometer, temp, PRND321 etc..) My radio also will not come on. I just put a brand new battery in and all of the fuses relevant to the cluster are good. I'm stuck. Any help with the issue would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Recently I had a similar issue with my '04 Blazer's instrument cluster. The fuel and temperature gauges would not register, the indicator lights would not come on when I turned the key to "run", and the shift indicator and odometer would not display when the engine was running.

The dealer service department traced the problem first to a defective ignition switch. Apparently, the computer that controls the cluster display was sensing that the switch was in "start" mode (at which point, all indicator lights should be "off" and the shift indicator and odometer should be off as well) when it was really in "run" mode.

When the problem re-occurred a week later, they found a blown fuse for the cruise control, which indicated a short somewhere in the harness for that component. So now I'm driving with a functioning cluster, but I can't use the cruise control. Small sacrifice, I suppose.

My cruise hasn't worked for quite a while now, but I have been driving my civic and when I do drive my blazer, it's only around two miles to work so I don't need it. Would you suggest checking for a possible short before heading straight for the switch? And did you just pull the fuse or did you replace it with one that could hold more current. (Dangerous I know, just wondering). Thank you for your response.

What they did was they completely disconnected the cruise control from the harness, because they determined that the short was in the wiring for the cruise control.

If you're able to isolate a short anywhere in the wiring (not an easy task, to say the least, unless you're an electrical line tech and/or have that kind of test equipment), definitely do that before swapping out the ignition switch.