Taurus Car Club of America : Ford Taurus Forum banner

I'm Have to Replace my Instrument Panel (or is it Cluster?))

2K views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  Jeff K 
#1 ·
Hello All;

I have a 2006 SEL Taurus and the Instrument Panel is becoming a problem for me. First, the gas gauge pretty much stopped working. By that I mean most of the time now the needle is pinned to the far right, but there are days where it might show 1/2 a tank or some other range of gas remaining. These odd days of almost working just trick it is playing on me, cause I do know this gas gage is NOT working. But really the main problem with this original Instrument Thing is that the 2 lines green LCD screen is also failing on me. It is either extremely dim to the point where it is impossible to read during daylight hours or it's not lighting up at all. This has been an intermittent problem for almost a year now. There were times when it worked just fine and bright as can be, but I don't see those days at all anymore. Now you can imagine without a gas gauge and without the LCD display how hard it is to know how much gas I may have left. So, I made the commitment to replace the Instrument Panel.

OK, so I've gone to one of the PICK & PAY lots here in Denver (I actually had to go to 3 before I found my replacement) and found one that looked just like mine. It was in a 2005 Taurus and the only difference between the two was that the '05 had the shifter on the column and mine is in the center console. I did not think this would be a problem because, after having taken my Panel out I did notice that it had a cavity at the bottom for where the gear shifter indicator pointer would be. My panel had that cavity covered with a black plastic piece that is secured with a couple of the screws that hold the clear plastic cover over the whole panel, mine even had a light bulb down there that would light up that space. Otherwise, everything about this new panel matched mine exactly. So I snipped the little string that was attached to the column shifter and pull the wire plug on it and bought the thing for $24 bucks. Great, I've got my replacement part and all should be well with me and the 'old fellow' soon enough.

Well, that was wishful thinking. All appeared to be working fine with the new Panel except for a few minor things. Minor, like the ABS warning light not going off and the Parking Brake light, and that weird symbol thing over on the right side that I had never seen before even though I did notice that my old panel had that same symbol in the same spot only I did know it because it had never come on before. Turns out that is some sort of warning for the Traction Control System, and that figures why I never saw it before cause I'm pretty sure my car doesn't have Traction Control only now the new and very BRIGHT LCD displays is telling me at startup that the Traction Control System is OFF. Anyway, at this point, I'm trying to figure out if I could live with these warning light always being on or if there might be a way to reset this thing to let it know it's riding in a different car now. And as I was still considering what to do with this new panel, two other problems popped up. The first new problem was serious enough to cause me to put my old panel back in and I'll try to get refunded on the 2005 panel. The second new problem is really the reason I have come to the forum to today to try to find an answer to.

So, the second new problem first ... and this is major! The odometer reading on the very bright LCD display shows different total miles than what my car actually has. It is displaying some 25,000 fewer miles then what I know to be on my car. And when I put my old panel back in, sure enough, my miles are right back up there. Therefore, the question becomes how does one reset the miles display on the LCD to reflect my actual miles. There's got to be a way to do this, right? I will get another Instrument Panel to replace mine - I have to. But I guess I'm going to have to know how to reset the thing. Nobody ever mentioned this in the 4 or 5 YouTube videos I watched on how to get the damn thing out. What's this I hear about holding the 'Reset' button while turning the car on? Is that the trick, and is that the right button to press?

The other MAJOR problem with the '05 Instrument Panel is as I was driving out of town last Monday for a 5-day work project (I'm still on the job here), the SPEEDOMETER stopped working! Well,it was working at all for the first 2 hours of my 3-hour drive, then upon stopping for a bit and then getting back on the road the darn thing started working just fine. But that was short-lived. The other night it started slowly climbing in speed and with my cruise control pretty much locked in at 60 mph (I do use Google Maps which now shows GPS speed) my needle held in at about 55 mph for a good while, then after slowing down for traffic and speeding back up again the thing just never went down yet climbed up well past the 60 I was driving at and it pinned itself far to the right at 120 mpg. Yep, I think this new panel is toast. Unless someone has a solution to fix it.

Thanks all making it this far - Once again the real question is - When replacing the Instrument Panel how do you reset to show true mileage of the car it is being put into? And BTW, I am surprised that this type of data is in this panel, I would have thought that type of info was coming from the car's master cpu.

P.S. I'm not going to do to much proofreading and correcting of this post because I really just want to get my question posted. And with my sometimes my endless correcting and re-writes can go on for hours ;) I'm a perfectionist that way, but not today so please forgive me just this once.
 
See less See more
#3 ·
The cluster has to be re-programmed by a Ford dealership to match the options that were originally equipped with your vehicle. ABS, traction control, compass & outside temperature were all options and the interment cluster is configured from the factory to enable/disable those features. Same goes for the odometer, though you'd would think that the mileage would be stored in the PCM. There is no way to configure any of this without the expensive tool that the dealership uses.

The gear shift indicator can be removed and can swapped out with the blank one from your cluster. I believe there are some screws that you have to remove from the bottom.

I don't know about the speedometer acting up. Could be a bad connection on the wire harness plug.
 
#4 ·
Well, guys, I've been doing some research and what little I have found out is that the milage for the car is stored on a ROM chip that is on the instrument cluster. (yeah, I would have thought that it would be stored in the PCM.) I did NOT learn that someone at a dealership could reprogram the IC (instrument cluster) but just learned that it would be next to impossible fix the odometer of 'Pick and Pay' found replacement IC. What I have determined to attempt to do is to desolder the good and very BRIGHT LCD screen from my found IC and then desolder and replace my very DIM and almost not working LCD screen. While I'm at it, I'll attempt to fix the gas gauge, but really don't know whats to be done to that to get it to work again. I could live without the gas gauge if I have a BRIGHT and working LCD screen.

So, wish me luck guys. I do know some things about electronics and I have a sodering gun & a soldering iron but have never attempted an operation such as this. I do plan on checking the DIM one out very closely for bad or broken solder spots that could possibly be a fix for the dimness of the screen. I've been driving about 3 weeks now with my dashboard in pieces and the instrument cluster plugged in and just resting in place. I want to get this project finished and resolved in some way before I put the dash parts back together. Hopefully, that might happen by the end of the day.

Thanks all, for listening at lease.
 
#5 ·
Use ETM to see what the cluster says the fuel level (FLI) is. If ETM shows the correct fuel level, you can hopefully get by with swapping the fuel gauge with one from a JY cluster.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top