Honda Civ 01 Instrument Panel failure
 

Hi! I am needing some advice. I own a 2001 Honda Civic EX. For the past 2-3 years my entire dashboard system has been failing intermittently. That means the speedometer, gas gauge, odometer, EVERYTHING just isn't working--totally dead. I had a Honda dealer look at it briefly whenthe problemfirst started and he told me that he had heard of this problem once before and he estimated it would cost ALOT to get fixed. Just last week I had my Honda in to see if they could pinpoint the problem and possibly get it repaired because it is happening more often. If this sounds weird, it seems to get more prominent of a problem when the weather (temperature) changes. They ran the diagnostic and didn't come up with anything conclusive. The entire time that the car was at the shop (3 days) they couldn't get the problem to "recreate" for them. So the mechanic told us that they could go ahead and replace the cluster/panel for around $800-$900 but he couldn't guarantee that that would fix the problem. They said I could bring it in again when the problem existed and they would run another diagnostic, but again with the same comment-- they couldn't promise it would fix it. What's a person to do? Spend nearly $1,000 on a 6 year old car as a gamble? I would like to trade this car in, but obviously can't do that with a bad instrument panel. By the way, the panel has only turned on for short periods of time about 3 times since last Thursday, May 3. I have to fill up my tank all the time, because I never know when the panel will work! Thanks for reading and for any advice you have.

RE: Honda Civ 01 Instrument Panel failure
 

sounds like a potential issue with either the connection to the panel, or the electrical to it.

sadly, it could be something as simple as a grommet or something expanding in high temperature and pulling the wires, or it could be some sort of fault in the electrical circuitry of the cluster.

questions:

does it occur in abnormally hot or cold weather?

has the dealer/technician checked all wire connections and/or taken the dashboard apart to check the connections?

has the dealer visually inspected the cluster/instrument panel?

RE: Honda Civ 01 Instrument Panel failure
 

Great questions! I had asked my husband to reply, but he has been busy at his own job, so here goes with what I know. The car was in the shop for a total of three days. From what I learned, they ran the diagnostic on the car, but weren't able to find anything. At the time it was in the shop (dealer), the dashboard was apparently working and through attempts to re-create the problem, they were unsuccessful. All conversation was between my husband and the service person as I was out of town.The information that I have gathered from the conversations is that we had 2 options, to let them go ahead and replace a part that they "think" might be the problem with a cost estimated at over $800 OR wait until the problem occurs again and bring it in for a further look. There has not been any other investigation done to the dashboard. I assume that the high cost of the bill would come from them actually removing the dashboard (labor) and not necessarily the part that they would replace.

The dashboard panel problem as I stated, started about 2 years ago. It has increased in occurrence over the past year and just in the past 2 weeks, the dashboard has come alive onlyabout 3 times for short intervals in approximately 700 miles worth of driving.

It did seem that the problem would occur more during a huge temperature/seasonal change, but the weather here has evened out at a warm 70 degrees or so for the past few weeks--colder at night, but no big temp/humidity changes. So now I am wondering if any tinkering they did do at the dealership caused even more damage to my dashboard?