My father in-law gave us a 1996 explorer AWD with a 5.0 for my son who is 16. A couple of weeks later he's out learning with my wife and a very strong electrical smell took over the cabin. They came right home and when I got in I found all of the gauges not working. The instrument lights work, blinkers work, but all gauges do nothing. Pulled cluster and wires look O.K. behind it from what I can see. They saw no smoke, just smell, fuses look O.K.. What could cook on this vehicle that would wipe out just the gauges?

 

All the gauges are fed from fuse 11, 7.5 amp in the underdash fuse box. The speedo is fed from fuse 25, 7.5 amp.

The gauges are fed from the fuse to the cluster with a red/yellow wire. The speedo is fed with a white/yellow.

 

Found fuse #11 blown, replaced it and started vehicle. Gauges worked for a moment and stopped. Turned off vehicle checked fuse #11, blown again. All of a sudden I smelled the electrical smell again and it is definitely coming out of the gauge cluster, strong smell through the holes in the sides. I will head to a salvage yard for a replacement set of gauges and hopefully that will take care of my problem. Thank you so much for taking the time to assist me on this quest. Appreciate it.. All The best, Kelly

 

Pulled dash back out and found that the problem was a bad capacitor in the Slosh/gage Module just in case any one has a similar problem.

 

And you got a replacement capacitor and fixed it? That's pretty cool if you did.

 

Well, No. this circuit board is a bit small for me. The values on the ceramic disc capacitor are unreadable so I would have a difficult time finding the right one. To figure out what was bad I ended up putting in another fuse after everything was apart and letting it cook again which lead, by smell, to the capacitor. I have a friend who owns a junk yard who is going to pull one out of one of the gauge clusters he has on hand, hopefully today. Thanks for checking.