Killed my instrument panel?

[horatio0163]

Hi, all, new member here.

Over the past few weeks I have been working on fixing broken wires in the driver's door loom. Like an idiot, rather than just fix the five broken wires, I cut the whole connector (C351) off to solder in a couple extra inches of length and add a healthy dose of heat shrink. Unfortunately I wrongly ASSumed that I would be able to just come match the wires when putting it back together. Turns out there are 3 colors that have more than one wire. Brown, for example, had four wires, one of which connects to the truck release and one to the driver's window. I got those two switched, and when i shorted the trunk release to test it I heard a snap (which I assumed to be a fuse--it wasn't).

Now that I've got the door back together I have two things that aren't working: my truck release and the gauges (speedo, tach, gas, temp) and odometer
(Digital) on the instrumen cluster. Other lights on the instrument cluster are working fine, including the parking brake light, turn signals, high beam indicator, and several more that I don't remember off the top of my head but are located at the bottom of the speedo. There are no blown fuses in either the engine bay or passenger bay fuse boxes. Had anything similar happened to anyone else? I found this thread (speedometer and all gauges not working! - Chevy Malibu Forum: Chevrolet Malibu Forums) on a Malibu forum, which leads me to believe it could be the BCM, or PCM. Do our Aveos have these same systems / work in the same way?

Thanks for your help. Seems like by trying to fix my power window problem I made everything a lot worse.

[horatio0163]

Sorry, should have listed the model. 2008 Aveo LS, manual sedan.

[horatio0163]

Solved it. It was a fuse after all, just not the 'cluster' fuse. I had checked continuity with a multimeter without removing any of the fuses beside the one marked 'cluster', and all indicated that they were okay. I tried swapping out the 'room lamp' fuse after studying circuit diagrams, and everything is as it should be. That turned out to be a simple fix, to my great relief.

Sorry to bother you all, and I hope my experience will help some future troubleshooter. Pull 'em out before you test 'em.

[06T200]

Cool! Glad you found the culprit!