PRND321 fading away

[Gowie73]

The led or bulb behind the PRND321 is fading away on my 05 5.3L Tahoe. Can't see it at all in the daytime. The dealer says I must replace the entire cluster. That seems silly. Any ideas?

 

[treehan77]

search the forums this is covered extensively. basically you most likely just need to "reflow" a bad solder joint - very common on these. if you don't know how to do it, you can send the cluster off and people will fix it for 100 or 150 bucks.

 

[Matahoe]

Around the 2004-2005 timeframe manufacturers were switching over to lead free solder (RoHS) for use in electronics and other things. Since the change it has been the cause of many solder related issues for vehicles during the first years of its use. Many of our models land right within that timeframe.

The PRNDL dim issue is fixed by reflowing the resistors on the back as Travis was pointing out. You can send it off to a local person that does clusters if you have one in your area. There are some on ebay that do an even exchange service which I would highly recommend.

Locally done I think I spent about $120 for replacing all the blubs and motors + add programming for trans fluid temp. Ebay seemed a bit too priced for me I think.

 

[MrBalll]

There are also a ton of videos on YouTube if you want to do it yourself.

 

[Matahoe]

Yep, you can do it yourself provided you are comfortable with the procedure or you have electronics and cluster exp. Otherwise I would pay to have someone do it that offers a warranty for their work. The guy that did my cluster provided a lifetime warranty for parts and labor on the stepper motors. Bulbs are not warranted because they are incandescent and will burn out after so many hours. If I decided to go LED then those would be lifetime. I decided against LED because I wanted to keep the stock look.