For the past few months the gauges on my 2005 Chevy Silverado have been acting strange.

As I drive the battery gauge will go from being in the middle to all the way up to the end of the gauge. The same thing happens with the oil pressure gauge at times.

If I unplug the positive cable from the battery for a few seconds the gauges will usually go back down to normal. Up until now I thought that I had a faulty alternator that was overcharging the battery, but I'm beginning to think its actually an issue with my gauges.

I tested the battery with a multimeter and the voltage is reading at 12.3 v while the gauge says the battery charge is well past the top end.

I was just wondering how I would go about testing my gauges and if this is a common problem other people are facing.

Here is an image of my gauges that I took recently.
http://s9.postimage.org/yudare6rj/guages.jpg

 

It's the gauges. I'm having a similar issue with my 04 Crewcab.

My speedometer tells me I'm doing 120 while at a red light.

120? I guess that explains why my oil pressure is at @ 80 PSI...

I've been using my GPS to monitor my speed, and doing regular fluids checks

and regular PM, till I can find a serious aftermarket gauge package.

 

Alright thanks for getting back to me, it makes me feel a little better that I'm not the only one with the issue. Guess I'll have to start looking at gauge packages, good thing taxes are coming up. Good idea using your GPS as a speedometer, I guess I lucked out when it was just my battery and oil gauges.

 

If you decide that you just want a straight up replacement they have them at Rockauto.com for around $160. There is a $300 core charge until you send the old one in though.

 

This is a common problem with GM cars from to . The stepper motors for the gauges are faulty and there was a recall for some of the vehicles. If you can solder, you can remove the gauges and remove the old stepper motors and solder new ones in for all 6 of the gauges. You can get the stepper motors on Ebay for around $25.00 and do it yourself to save a lot of money.

 

Thanks for the tip, I'll have to pull out the cluster tomorrow to see what type of stepper motor I need to get, no point in paying for a whole new cluster if I can just fix the gauges that aren't working properly.

 

There was a recall on those clusters just a few years ago. I got a notice in the mail one day of the recall but had never had any issues with it and then the very next day my speedo was showing me doing like 80 when i was really doing like 5 so I took it to the local chevy dealer and my vin number matched those that fell into the recall so it got fixed with no cost to me. If I were you I'd take it to the dealer and see if yours is part of the recall.

 

That's even better, I guess I'll be hitting up my Chevy dealer this weekend.

 

My speedometer, oil pressure and engine temp gauges are all bad on my '03 Silverado with 190k miles on it. Instead of getting new gauges or stepper motors, I am thinking about using an OBD II tool to display the info my faulty gauges cant.

Has anyone used on they particularly like? Ideally it would be one that had its own display as well as interfaced to a laptop. The display would be nice so I don't have to have my laptop in the truck all the time to see how fast I am going.