99 Windstar Instrument Panel Whacks Out!!

Hi, I really need some help. For the last few months, the instrument panel gauges on our Windstar go nuts about once or twice a day. The speedometer jumps between 0 and 120, the tach jumps from 0 to red zone levels, heat gauge goes up and down and fuel gauge does the same. This lasts just a few minutes and doesn't appear to hurt anything, but it is something we need fixed before we sell this van in the next year or so. This happens once or twice per day now. Of course, we took it to the Ford dealer and even though it didn't happen for them, they looked around and found some chewed up wires near the rear and replaced them, at a nice little cost of $330 (including labor to remove several panels to follow the wires along). This seemed to help for a few days, but now it's back to the old tricks, so their "fix" did nothing. I don't want to take it back there since they said it will just be a new bill to start looking again, and they charge close to $100/hr for labor. And they also said the few minutes this lasted would not be enough time for them to see what's wrong.

Anyway, I've looked all over for this problem with no luck, so I was hoping someone else might have an idea what we could look at next.

Thanks.

Hi, I really need some help. For the last few months, the instrument panel gauges on our Windstar go nuts about once or twice a day. The speedometer jumps between 0 and 120, the tach jumps from 0 to red zone levels, heat gauge goes up and down and fuel gauge does the same. This lasts just a few minutes and doesn't appear to hurt anything, but it is something we need fixed before we sell this van in the next year or so. This happens once or twice per day now. Of course, we took it to the Ford dealer and even though it didn't happen for them, they looked around and found some chewed up wires near the rear and replaced them, at a nice little cost of $330 (including labor to remove several panels to follow the wires along). This seemed to help for a few days, but now it's back to the old tricks, so their "fix" did nothing. I don't want to take it back there since they said it will just be a new bill to start looking again, and they charge close to $100/hr for labor. And they also said the few minutes this lasted would not be enough time for them to see what's wrong.

Anyway, I've looked all over for this problem with no luck, so I was hoping someone else might have an idea what we could look at next.

Thanks.

It sounds like it might be a bad ground somewhere. I say this because all of the gauges are affected. I'm not sure where to start looking. Open the hood and look for ground wires that might need cleaning. You might want to check the library for a wiring diagram.

Regards

Dan