Even if it was low on fuel and the engine cut out the dash lights would remain light.

 

Happened to me.

My keychain was configured just right, and my knee hit it, momentarily shutting the car down.

Check for heavy keys...

 

i wasnt that low on fuel. probably 4 bars or better. good idea tho to take it to have the codes checked.
this is so strange, and made no sense to me, that why i brought it to the thread. to see if anyone else had ever heard of this happening before.

@billman- that is a possibility, but i really dont think that is what happened. i dont recall any movement with or around my keys. besides, a minute later, the cluster lit back up on its own. also im kinda short, so my knees arent that close to the keys.... but a good thought for sure.

thanks guys.

anyone else???

 

For your cluster to go blank but your blower and your radio to stay on, it would have to be an electrical disconnect going to your engine and/or CPU. My guess would be a poor ground, but it could also be a bad relay.

You might start by cleaning your grounding cable terminals. Also, try checking the relays to make sure they are nice and snug. I believe those relays are located under your hood near your battery.

Billman might be right as well. I've heard of people with very heavy keychains gradually wearing their ignition switch. If you have had lots of keys on your keychain in the past, your problem might be in the ignition switch.

 

check the cable going from the + on the battery to your starter

 

ok finally was able to diagnos the problem yesterday.... turns out that it was the old alarm system that is not currently in use. when i bought the car, it did not have remotes for the clifford alarm. i was under the impression that it was disconnected. well apparently it was not, and was actually just turned off. well apparently for no known reason, the brain was randomly deciding when to cut power to my dash/cluster/engine. it died on me yesterday 3 times, (the last time i was on my way to autozone to have a diagnostics test run). thank God it happened the third time right in front of a car audio shop. i had the guys take a look at it, and was able to diagnos the problem after about an hour and a half of head scratching . in all, they charged me $40 to check my whole car over for 2 hrs and finally fix my problem. they took the alarm out of the link all together and now all is well!