Well, I'm not a Cavalier guy, but I've done enough work on my friend's, that I think I should make a write-up on this, since I could find almost no relevant info on here, or anywhere else, besides "Your cluster is fubar, get a new one"
Symptom:
2000-2005 Cavalier/Sunfire/pretty much any other GM with high quality electronics in it from those years
Speedometer not working
Fuel gauge does not work, or gets in a sword fight with the temp gauge needle
Tachometer does not work
Temperature gauge does not work
Any, or all of these gauges do not return to the "0" position when the car is off
When you remove clear gauge cover, you can "test" the apparently faulty stepper motor by manually moving the gauge. It should move very easily, and with almost no sound. If it is clunky, and is hard to move, you have a roasted stepper motor.
GM made tons of these high quality pieces that fail after only a few years(My friend's lasted a whopping 30,000 miles for her fuel gauge)
If you pop open your gauge cluster, you'll see a number of little white motors that your needles sit on top of(you pry the needles off with a fork) These are your stepper motors
I apologize for the mess on my table, it was 12 degrees outside when I pulled this thing, and was freezing when I came inside, and didn't feel like cleaning much
Your stepper motor has a little problem inside it
Original part numbers on these were X C5 128(C5 being the bad batch)
these are now replaced with X 25 128. Easily available from ebay. I paid $4.80 each for the ones on this gauge cluster.
They're soldered on in 4 points
These are big joints, and don't require someone with a ton of experience to un-solder and solder the new ones in.
But here's a link if you'd like to get to know your foe first!
How to solder and un-solder things
Someone should make this a sticky! It'll save you a lot of trouble, and give you a gauge cluster that has stepper motors with a lifetime warranty!
I wrote this fairly quick, and with not a ton of detail, so if anyone wants to modify/spruce this up, go for it! I probably won't be visiting this site a whole lot. Just figured I'd drop off some knowledge
Why make it a sticky when its 100x easier just to replace the cluster? They are easy and cheap enought to find. Not to mention that removing the needles on a 00+ cluster is a bad idea, cuz its almost impossable to get them to read correctly again.
Well, first of all, that is the reason your technical data on this forum is very low. 2nd of all, the gauges read fine if you assemble it properly. The new ones I installed are perfectly fine. And, it only takes an additional half hour to change out the motors, and not replace them with a part that is already doomed to go bad. GM even had tens of thousands of complaints to the NHTSA about these gauge issues. Not only in cavy's, but in their entire lineup. So.. Conclusion
Put in a little effort, for a much longer lasting solution, and a lower price.
Or,
Keep putting used band-aids on the wound
If gauge clusters fail at 30,000-50,000 miles... How long do you think it will be till the low mileage clusters dry up on Ebay?
Sorry for adding knowledge to a site that apparently needs some. I'm sure someone here who has at least a little technical knowledge will appreciate it.
Very low technincal data?? You must have not looked around. I dare you to fine another forum with more info reguarding J cars than this one.
Just for the record I found this information very useful and will be doing this exact same repair for my GF for christmas!
Thanks PistonDoc. Hope it works out for ya as well as it did for my friend's car! Oh, and I found it helpful to warm the needles up with a hair dryer(not too close!) for a minute before removing them. Makes the plastic expand, so they're easier to pop off.
Oh, and I wasn't saying this isn't the biggest j-body site around. Why do you think I posted the info here? I was saying, compared to other car/motorcycle forums, the technical data here is a dry well. On the forum I administrate, we have pages of topics on maintenence, minor and major repairs, write-ups, manuals, picture documentation, wiring diagrams, and even separate sections for motor swaps, transmission parts/customizations, hybrid block/head setups, heck, even a section dedicated on how to make specialty tools to do specific jobs for your car. And our site only has about 200 active members. My motorcycle forums have a lot of the same thing.
Oh, and dinkles.. Why would you start an internet argument about someone adding good data to the site? Honestly, that's one of the most retarded things I've seen yet. "Go awayz. We don't needz your data here! We be replacin' our stuffs"
Congrats you can correct an english paper. I guess that helps you sleep at night. All i was saying is that its a quicker and easier fix to just replace the cluster.
God Alan what were you thinking posting this information. We don't want it here and no one will EVER use it so it shouldn't be here. More information than necessary is BAD BAD BAD!
/tinkles
alan thanks for posting this. someone will use it.
PRND321 Till I DIE
Old Motor: 160whp & 152ft/lbs, 1/4 Mile 15.4 @88.2
M45 + LD9 + 4T40-E, GO GO GO
I guess that someone is me. Thank you for the information Alan. I've been having this issue with my sunfire's gauge cluster for a few months. gmpartsdirect doesn't seem to sell the gauge cluster anymore and the dealership wants a few hundred dollars for a refurbished one. I was skeptical about getting a used one from a junk yard because I don't want it to fail again so this seems like the cheapest and most reliable way to go.
I searched ebay but could not find X25-128... Did you mean X25-168? Was it a typo?
I'll post photos of the procedure when I do it.
I finally got around to doing this repair on my girlfriend's 05 Cavalier and it went fine. I used a 15/30W iron on the 30W setting and .032" diameter solder. It takes a while to desolder the old motors but just be patient and you will get it. It took me about an hour and a half to desolder the old ones and resolder the new ones in. For anyone who said this is a stupid idea and it's just easier to replace the cluster, you may be right but the cluster will probably fail again in another 5-10K miles since they were all made with the same faulty stepper motors. This is NOT a difficult job and now that I've done it I could probably do the entire thing start to finish in less than an hour. I'll throw in my $0.02 to detail my experience:
Here are some tips:
1. Pull the fuse for the air bag (just a precaution).
2. When popping the needles off I found it effective to use the blunt end of two forks or spoons. Put one blunt end upside down under each side of the needle and pry up evenly. I don't like using screw drivers because they are straight while the fork/spoon has a curvature to the handle which can give you some leverage. They are on there pretty good and you might need to work around the needle a couple times to get it to come off. There is nothing special holding them on though, they just pop off.
3. When desoldering, I had my girlfriend help by running the desoldering braid along the edge of the prongs for the motors while the solder was hot. "Scrubbing" the braid back and forth will get most of the solder off. You can see when it's done by looking across the board and making sure that the "hershey's kiss" shape of the solder joint is gone and it's just the prong sticking through.
4. When taking the old motors out you will need to wiggle them back and forth and hold the soldering iron on the prong on the other side to melt any solder left holding the prongs in. Once you get one prong out the rest come out pretty easily, you just have to work at it and be patient because if the prong breaks off the motor it will be a pain in the ass to get it out of the hole so you can put the new one in.
5. Once you get all the new motors soldered in and the cluster put back together
DON'T PUT THE NEEDLES ON YET. Leave the clear cover off and see below:
RECALIBRATING THE NEEDLES:
1. With the needles off, put the cluster back in the car and plug it in. This will autocalibrate the motors to the zero position.
2. Put the speedo and tach on right at zero or a tiny bit below (you will need to tweak these later).
3. Start the engine and let it warm up (just let it run for a while, you want it to be at normal operating temp so you can install the temp needle where it should normally be at operating temp). You should also see that your tach is now working and you may need to disconnect the cluster, pop the needle off and adjust it if the idle seems too low or too high. Don't do any needle popping with the engine running as the needles fluctuate slightly and pressing on the motor while it is on could damage it.
4. Once the engine is warmed up put the temp needle somewhere near the middle of the gauge w/ the engine running. It doesn't need to be exact, just remember that wherever you put it will be the normal operating temperature for the vehicle, so in the future you should make sure it stays around there. Most cars stay slightly below the center of the range at normal operating temperature.
5. The last step is to go for a test drive (to the gas station). Take a GPS or a data logger with you to get your exact MPH and make note whether the speedometer is off and whether it's fast or slow. Once you get home you will need to pop the needle off while the motor is in the zero position and adjust it one way or the other. While you are at the gas station, top your tank off and then go home.
6. Turn the ignition off and your temp gauge should go back down to zero or close to it. Now turn your key to the accessory position and put the fuel gauge needle on full or slightly above it. When you turn the car off and on or go into accessory mode, your fuel gauge should now rise and fall between full and empty.
7. All of these gauges can be tweaked if you are OCD like me and want them all to be perfect, but just be aware that the more times you pop the needles off the more you risk messing up the motors and they are very delicate. Oh, and don't crash on your test drive cause you don't have an airbag with the fuse out
Oh and yes the part number is X25-168, not 128. And getting the needles to read correctly is not hard, you just have to know what you're doing
Adjustment to step 4 under recalibrating the needles: don't do the temp gauge with the engine on. The sensor will pick up the temp with the key in accessory and that way the gauge won't be moving. So turn the engine back to accessory before putting the temp needle on.
Fantastic Write UP!!!
This helped me out!!
I bought a sunfire cluster from brandon fetter. And the tempurature gauge motor and tach motor were all jacked up. So i used parts from my cavalier cluster and it worked like a charm! Thanks.
And to everyone who keeps saying it isnt safe to remove the needles.. I havent had any problems. I have taken apart 4 cluster and not one have the needles been messed up in anyway
]:-> 287 TimeSlips In Hand. Car Still Runs Strong... 3 Differentials Later ]:->
I wish that I had this information about a year ago. I couldn't find any motors on eBay back then. I ended up replacing the motor for my speedometer with one off of an older gauge. Unfortunately, it was from a bad batch. Last week, I noticed my GPS said I was going 95, but my speedo said 65. When I let off of the gas, I noticed the needle was just stuck at 65.
I decided to replace the cluster with a Sunfire gauge, as I have replaced my entire cluster once, and the speedo motor once. I figured it was time for a change. I plan on swapping the interior of my 04 Cavi to a Sunfire interior down the road anyway. Might as well have the gauge to match. Now, I can at least use the other motors from my Cavi gauge if the Sunfire unit fails.
Long story short...
Thanks for a good write up Alan. I had a feeling there was something wrong with the old batch of motors. You helped confirm it by creating this write-up. I personally prefer to install 12 volt LEDs whenever I have the gauge apart anyway. This way, the motors work great, and the lighting is extremely bright, and will probably outlast the car.
thanks Alan Nicholls
it is nice to see some technical advise on how to fix something gm screwed up on....
on a side note will this work on a post 2k fuel gauge?
i own a 97 z24 and my brother owns a 99 rs both have faulty fuel gauges mine reads above full all the time and his reads just below full
or is it a fuel pump/float issue?
