Since I bought my 89 rs about 2 years ago my oil pressure gauge and my coolant temp gauges' needles have been pinned WAY off to the right of the reading area and dont move. Just recently i replaced the coolant sensor, coolant sender, and the oil sensor/sender hoping to make the problem an easy fix (like the good people at autozone thought). well it just wasted me about 40 bucks in parts and hours in labor. The only things left that i think could be wrong is the entire cluster, or chevy's awful wiring they did in camaros. I think im going to try fixing the wiring but i was wondering if anyone knows what voltage or amprege each wire gets so i can test and see, or if anyone else has a possible solution other than putting in new aftermarket gauges.

 

Chevrolet did awful wiring in Camaros. Thats a new one.
Now since your gauges don't move at all. not even go down when the key is first turned on then I would have suspected the gauges are bad. The gauges have a memory when you turn your key off. Buit after those readings have had time to change, like the temp drops, then when you turn the key on again and power is sent to the gauges they should have dropped down until the senders send a new signal. It has been pretty rare that I see a problem in GM wiring unless some other thing was done.

 

I can't think of much of a soloution, unplug the sending units and see what the guages do, they should drop. Some clusters used built in voltage regulators, that can cause this if they start screwing up as well. Actually, I just signed onto this forum because my younger brother just bought a '91 RS that is doing the same thing with the oil pressure guage, but the tach is messed as well, at idle is sits at around 2000-2300 rpm, but drops to 0 with the engine off. It acts almost as though the cluster is out of a V-6 car. My suggestion for your car is, see if you can find another cluster for a decent price and try it. As for GM using crappy wiring, yeah in the late 80's and early 90s they did, the cavalier is a perfect example of that, if the car is well taken care of, never winter driven etc. it is usually fine, otherwise...

 

Mine have the same problem jrdnrdg... In fact most 3rd gens I know have similar issues, which is why most of us have a set of guages attached to the center console. :P

Eventually I'm going to replace my entire cluster with a dakota digital dash, but thats some $$$ I don't have yet. :P

 

mine sits at 7000 rpm at idle, and doesn't return to 0 when off[&:]

 

The gauges wont go to zero when you turn the key off. They have a memory. They should drop when the key is turned on but the engine off. And a tach usualy does not drop all the way

 

its been a while since i posted this but i thought i would let you know that i fixed the problem by resetting the needle with my fingers so if you have the same issue go ahead and give that a try