3 gauges failing at once?

[ChipBeck]

Gentlemen,

My yellow GT has 8000 miles on it and I have only replaced the fuel gauge (about a year ago). But when I fired it up tonight I had 3 inoperative gauges. Tach, temp, and oil pressure gauges were all sitting at zero with the car running. Check engine light was also on. :confused Hopefully the car had oil pressure and the gauge was faulty. Has anybody had three gauges fail at one time before?

Chip

 

[shelbyelite]

If you had three fail at one time, I would check your ground and the charge on your battery and RE-START the car when you are sure there is a full charge. I have had MOST or ALL gauges not work at one time, on several different ocassions and it was always a ground or low voltage issue at start up. Once restarted all gauges came ON LINE. Usually (not always) when a particular gauge went out completly, it was just one gauge at a time.

 

[tmcphail]

And scan it to read the reason for the DTC.

 

[nota4re]

I suspect that it was not a check engine light but rather a Check Gauges light and therefore no DTC recorded. Chip, the gauges are initialized at each start by the gauge control module and it is possible that for this start sequence, the initialization did not complete and therefore the gauges would not be operative for this ignition on duration. Hopefully a re-start with a deliberate pause between key-on and cranking would remedy the situation. If not, unfortunately you have been bitten by the gauge failure bug - with the only consolation being that you will endure only 1 labor charge instead of 3.

Sorry this has happened to you. I drove my car yesterday - first time in about 6 weeks and when I fired her up, I'm always holding my breath to see if all of the gauges are going to check in!

 

[ChipBeck]

Torrie,

What's a DTC???

Chip

 

[tmcphail]

Diagnostic trouble code to see what invoked the check engine light

 

[soroush]

sorry to hear that chip, this weekend I started my black car which had sat on the lift for over a month and I had no gauges, then went to put gas in it, after the second time I started it all was ok again:confused

 

[gtforme]

Why doesnt FORD do a recall on the FORD GTs for guages

It seems as though the problem with the guages is widespread and that being said it must be a design flaw , not owner error

You hear all over the news that Toyota and recently Honda are recalling cars due to isuses within their manufacturing and design departments

What would it take or how would you go about getting a recall started

Has this been previously discussed or suggected on the forum before

 

[MAD IN NC]

Why..... Almost 5 years of ownership and I've had no guage problems, even with after market charger... Many others are in the same boat, many even with heavily modified FGT's!

When there is an issue - they responded (ie axle bolts)...................

Please define what your personal definition of "widespread is" if you want to compare it directly to a Toyota scenario.......


just my personal .02 cents of course.....

 

[GT35065]

Chip, that blows. When my guage failure happened, I lost tach and temp guage at the same time. I had the guages checked out at the dealer with the lap top computer a ways back, and it looks like both guages are junk. The tech could manually manipulate other guages, but not these two. I hope yours is something simpler. I sure wish someone could come up with a fix for why these guages are going bad. For what its worth, my tach and temp did not read 0 when they died. Temp stuck around 135, tach around 1200 RPM but it moves slightly with higher revs sometimes.

 

[GT35065]

My two cents is that it is happening to an inordinate amount of cars. Certainly there is a design problem. If Ford helps out, I'd be elated. Not likely.

 

[RALPHIE]

I have a feeling that this will be one of the discussion issues with the Ford Team Members at Rally V. If you think you have a reasonable, objective input to such a discussion, I suggest you sign up for the Rally, and attend.

(Dave, Chip, Shelby - perhaps this thread should be moved to the Ford GT Owners Section)

 

[PL510*Jeff]

Why..... Almost 5 years of ownership and I've had no guage problems, even with after market charger... Many others are in the same boat, many even with heavily modified FGT's!

When there is an issue - they responded (ie axle bolts)...................

Please define what your personal definition of "widespread is" if you want to compare it directly to a Toyota scenario.......


just my personal .02 cents of course.....

+1 - with 4.5 years and not an issue with me. add another $ .02 from me.

 

[twobjshelbys]

I'll pipe in on this even as a newbie.

Auto manufacturers will hardly ever (maybe never) issue a recall on an issue like this. Recalls are reserved for safety issues. Mustangs had a "recall" for the passenger side air bag sensitivity (it was a "reflash"). Brakes and other things like that get recalls, but the horrible brake fiasco with my 99 era Jeep Grand Cherokee was never called a recall by Chrysler, and in doing so they could place severe restrictions for free repairs. (Mine was out of warranty, but more than that I'd considered brakes a wear item and had the repairs done "not at a dealer" so I couldn't claim).

The Mustangs have lots of problems which many consider ought to be candidates for Recalls, but Ford will only do TSB (Technical Service Bulletin). The most notable one is the clutch on the GT500s. That TSB has gone through 4 or 5 revisions, and now they're using the 2010 parts as the fix for the previous model years. Another is the convertible tops (which mine is starting to show). The problem with TSBs is that they will never tell you about it. They only way you get a TSB is if you bring in a vehicle with the symptoms addressed by the TSB, and even then, most techs miss the GT500 clutch problem.

So what it takes is enough separate claims on the instrument panel to dealers. Because of the very limited number of vehicles the pool for possible claims is very low. I would not just go to the local dealer, but instead elevate/escalate to the regional/district manager and encourage him to look at the larger picture.

 

[shelbyelite]

It would be great if they would recall or replace the gauges for free. It would save me a TON of money as I have to replace them here and there. Actually replaced 3 with-in the last month, BUT, I am going through about 75 Ford GTs a year. Out of the 300+ GTs I have bought and sold, I have probably replaced a told of 10 maybe 12 gauges. In reality, its probably not a BIG enough issue for Ford to do anything. I hope for a recall, but highly doubt it......

 

[ViperJoe]

The fact that gauges fail inexplicably is highly disconcerting. Replacing a failed gauge is anything but a guarantee that the problem has been solved.

 

[Kayvan]

The Gauge Fail Survey has ~50 votes; I recall the axle bolts had over 250+ responses here in a running thread/tally, and results were sent to FORD.

Untill we hit those #s or all people here with failed guages vote on said survey, its not going to be statistically relevant.

http://www.fordgtforum.com/forums/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=35

 

[twobjshelbys]

I find it odd that in the past few days there are multiple reports of multiple gauge failures. A single gauge could fail randomly, but simultaneous failures would be extremely low probability events (not zero, of course). But the source of the failure is more likely higher upstream.

Note that I'm not saying that the gauges aren't broken. Merely that the their breakage is likely not the gauge itself but somewhere upstream (the gauge controller or the ECU commmanding the gauge controller.) The gauges themselves could be innocent bystanders in the failure chain. If so there should be multiple failures. (Unless of course, Ford has made gauges more resilient to the source of the failure event and not told anyone.)

 

[standj]

Chip, to make matters worse, I don't think there are any Temp gauges around!!! After I sold my spare a few months back, I am still waiting with no delivery time in site.

Sorry to hear about your bad news

John

 

[ChipBeck]

I have 3 gauges not working but perhaps it's a battery problem that will resolve itself with a full charge. My car has been out of warranty for some time and it's been very trouble free. 1 gas gauge failure in 5 years has been my only problem (not counting mods that have nothing to do with Ford). I bought a car with a 3 year warranty and I don't think that Ford owes me anything. Perhaps slightly lower prices on items that fail often.

After I get my GTs gauge problem diagnosed and know the cause I will report back. My yellow Ford GT is like the family dog. I love it and so does Veronica and Charley. We don't like it when our baby is sick.

Chip