Can anyone guide me in the right direction?

The dash - gauges and lights - as well as the radio, stopped working on my 2005 Silverado. Also, the comm port does not work. It powers up the scanner, but the truck does not send any info to it.

I visually checked every single fuse in the truck, and also replaced the ignition switch. I already read about the usual cigar lighter fuse problem, but there is power going to both of the cigar lighters.

Randomly, the dash will light up, and sometimes the tach, odometer and speedo will work, but none of the other gauges will.

Went all over looking for loose wires, but found nothing. There is power going to the radio, so when you hit the button, the time will show, and sometimes, the radio kicks on after I shut off the truck, but before I pull out the key.

Any ideas of what could be wrong?

 

Sounds like a loose wire or bad ground somewhere. Has any work been done on the truck lately? If so that would be a good area to start looking at.

 

No work done on the truck recently. Just happened out of the blue. Would a bad ground cause things to sometimes work? For the past 2 days, tach and speedo came back on, but nothing else on the dash works.

 

A bad ground could make connection sometimes and sometimes not. That depends on how loose it is or how badly corroded or rusted it is.

 

In the suburban I had, it would intermittently shut off while driving upon various degrees of bumps... Found the ground wires behind the cluster, tapped into them and grounded them to metal behind the cluster, and never had the problem again.

 

I had the same problem on my 1999 truck. It was a mega fuse in the engine compartment.