neon speedometer problem

[mopartodd]

Im having a problem with my 96 neon coupe. The instument cluster goes dead. Just the instruments are lost, not the lights and turn signals. The problem appears to be in the JB-2 connector that goes into the instrument cluster. Has anyone else had this problem, and if so, how did you fix it? I thought about hard wiring the thing but the connector points are some bastard size, and there isn.t enough room to do any soldering.

[Mr Belvedere]

Hey Todd,

We had our '96 Neon Sport in the shop about 4x in 2 weeks for the same thing. They said it was a flakey board, so they were pretty much just tweaking it and tightening it back down...it would work for anywhere from 15mins to a couple days and flake again. Well, eventually they decided it may be a good idea to just replace the whole board...no problems since.

Jason

[mopartodd]

MrBelvedere. Yeah, I kind of thought about the board, but hopefully it will be this connector plug. I just found the right size female connector to try. It is a crappy set-up to begin with. The connector doesn't even snap into the board, not a very positive type connection. I'd be surprised to hear that they didn't have a bunch of problems with them. Thanks for the info, now I know which direction to go next if this doesn't get it. Have a good one.