I posted this in "under the hood":


Hey guys, after a good warm-up on the car, the gauge cluster blinks quickly when i come to a dead stop. This does not occur when I am "actually" driving. It takes a good 15 min before it starts. Overall though, the car drives pretty normal.

There was a post that i had found about a guy who said his gauges were dimming. That is about all i found with relation to this. I only went like 10 pages deep in the search under gauges blinking, blinking gauge cluster, etc. Maybe i am typing in the wrong thing which im pretty sure thats the only way to put it.

Now, if i had a short, is there anywhere in the S that has a common problem?

Recently, i added an exhaust. Tonight i added a testpipe. So far, nothing has changed. The blinking still occurs.

Lastly, the radio and other lights in the car do not blink or flash. The headlights/taillights do not blink. The other components stay lit. It is only the cluster itself. 6/5/09

 

its from low voltage. test your battery. if thats good then test the alternator but its probably the battery.

 

so far, the response and searching leads me to be the alternator. Im gonna run to advanced and have them check it.

Anyone ever experienced this? The thing that gets me is that i have 28.5k miles and its an 06. idk, just seems odd

 

thanks xupthree60. ill do that here shortly

 

has the instrument cluster been removed an has it been reinstalled corrrectly.. all connectors connected correctly... had my dash doin weird light stuff back when i got it.. took it out.. in doing so came across a connector just wasn't fully snapped.. noted that.. didn't find anything with the cluster and reinstalled and it all worked and had noted that one not just right connector so i duplicated the problem and wasn't surprized to see yep.. that was it for that... currently i'm replacing all the blubs in mine so thanks for this little reminder to be sure to check all electrical connectors..

 

i havent removed it. That to me, how you explained it, is what i would think the problem could be. This just recently started. Im thinkin since the exhaust is so deep, maybe it vibrated something loose. possibly far-fetched, but who knows. leaving now to get everything check.

 

it didn't vibrate loose all the connectors click into place.

More than likely it's your charging system. When the alternator starts to get week, the instrument cluster flickers.

 

well, went into get my battery checked and it was pretty low. it was running on 12.96v and it was running 302cca. definitely getting low. revving to 3k showed 5A and idle was at 5.1.

Battery was all over the place.

I will be checking for the next few days on the flickering. It didnt do it the whole ride home. Hopefully this was the fix.

 

did they check the output of the alternator?