I was just driving down the road and my temp gauge started to wack out. It went up and past the red mark of being too hot and went over to the speedometer. The speedometer needle is now stuck and pinned by the busted temperature gauge. Will this mess up my speedometer stepper motor if I drive like this?
Is it just a bad stepper motor on the temp gauge? Bad sending unit? Is there a stop that should prevent the temp needle from going too far?
any help would be appreciated, it is my only car.
Jeremy
2004 Chevy Cavalier 4 door automatic.
mine does the same thing.. smack it a little and it will let loose... I think we need new clusters.. because people have been having this problem and they solved with a new cluster.
http://www.jbodytuner.com
^^ The real jbody store and forums!!!!!
I bought a sunfire cluster from ebay, works great and was cheap as hell
09 HHR LS, Wife's Car
05 Cavalier, Clarion DXZ375MP, Autotek MM8000.5 & 13Kv.2, wife's old car, updates coming soon
I never had this problem, just the lighting on the odometer is freaking out.
Caution: Redneck Posting
MMMM, HIDs
Is anyone familiar with the little step motors? Would a step motor from a 97 work on a 2004? Can you buy the step motors from Chevrolet? Does it matter where the needle is positioned on the step motor or does the electronics take care of that? I was just wondering if I could take the stepper motor from the 97 at the junkyard and just install it in place of the screwed up one in her car.
Also are the stepper motors different between speedo and temp gauge or are they all the same.
thanks in advance,
Jeremy
Are they trying to make baby needles?
I'm having the same problem. Took the gauge cluster apart and found...stepper motors just like what Chevy is having problems with in the higher end SUVs and trucks. If you search Google, you will find that there is a service bulletin (as well as lots of complaints and legal action) for this BUT it doesn't include Cavaliers. I'm serching high and low for the replacement motors (currently to no avail) and will post once I find some.
The cluster in my 04 went nuts in 2006. The speedometer would read about 20mph when I was pushing around 1750rpm in 5th gear, temp gauge was as low as it goes after 15 minutes of driving, then on my way to the dealership my tach started to freak out too. At one point I was holding about 1500RPM in 5th and the tach just slowly started to climb, until it hit the stop needle on the far side past 8k :p I took pics of it on my old cell, but was never able to do anything with them. My wife and I were laughing about it the whole time. The dealer said that it was the first time they'd ever seen such a problem on a new cav.
My girlfriend has the same problem with her sunfire, except the rpm needle goes over the speedo, or under depending how fast shes driving. It uisually happens after the car has been driving for a long time. Always fixes its self though. Its a pain, but it only happens sometimes.
