The heart breaking and joyous story of my 348 coolant and oil pressure dash light failure, diagnosi

After 4 months of multiple repairs, a major, replacement of almost all the sensors (mainly preventative due to age), etc I finally have my car running perfect.....until yesterday. On it’s first long distance voyage a 70 mile round trip drive through down town Chicago, during rush hour traffic, the coolant temp gauge illumination light goes dark and the needle pegs all the way to the right.


At this point I am imagining the worst case scenario my water pump has seized and the timing belt is going out in the next few milliseconds.. but then, as I am looking for somewhere to pull over in a three lane road with the most aggressive drivers in the planet....I realize that the red coolant temp warning light is not on, there is no smell of coolant and the car is running fine. But that doesn’t matter I have to pull over and find out what is going on. At that exact moment the oil pressure gauge goes dark and and the needle drops all the way to the left... no pressure!!! It was like I was in a scene of “Air Disasters” I have lost both engines, audio and gauge warnings going off (in my head) and I am going down....hard.


I make it to the shoulder, shut the car off and check the engine bay. The fans are not even running...so I think to myself maybe they failed.. but then I realized that I replaced almost everything during the major (water pump, all bearings with HE ones to include ALT bearing).


I am starting to feel a little better and an inkling of hope has set in ( however small). So I close my eyes and replay the events in chronological order.....The dash illumination lights! That’s when it all started! The coolant gauge illumination light goes off and needle pegs to the right shortly thereafter the oil pressure light goes off and that needle drops. This may just be an electrical issue! I get back in the embattled cockpit and turn the car to ignition II and the coolant temp Gauge is a little under the halfway point! I turn the car on and the oil gauge goes up slightly when I rev it! I am alive!! After an extremely deep sigh and breath of relief I turn the headlights on and immediately the coolant needle pegs to the right and oil pressure drops. Not this time you bastard, I know your lying to me just to get attention!


I make it home and immediately attempt to dissembled the gauge cluster in a nervous desperate struggle with 2 screws that were put in at an angle that require you to painfully rest your ribs on the spear of destiny (aka gated shifter) after removing it I find heavy corrosion on the connector and of course guess what.... the coolant temp gauge and oil pressure gauge are on the same circuit board with the connector attachment on the coolant gauge (see pic).


I clean the connectors with deoxit and qtips, wipe it clean (it took several swabs and powerful finger muscles) and then stabilant 22 (22a I applied it raw not mixed with alcohol). I then remembered that I had some led dash lights that I bought for my porsche 968 a few years back. After rummaging for half an hour in the garage and making a huge mess( don’t care at this point) I find them, try them, and they work! What an emotional day...this never happens to me. First actually finding them and then having them work( see pic ).


So the morale of this story is clean your dash light connectors now before you suffer a mild heart attack like I did.
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