Ford Fiesta 2003 - issue with dashboard after start up

killer_penguin

Hi everyone,

Bit of a strange question - couldn't find a resource online about it so I thought I would reach out here to see if anyone has come across this before.

I have a 2003 ford fiesta 1.4 and its been working away fine for last 3 years. Lately though I have noticed the following:

- If the car has been sitting idle for more then a few hours, when I turn the key in the ignition the dashboard display does not turn on correctly for a minute or so.

- Normally the dash board and would show all the lights for each thing for a second or two, the clock would show 88:88 and then show the mileage and the time I had previously set correctly. Now it shows no lights at all for a minute, the digital part of the display stays on 88:88 for the full minute before the lights come on and its business as usual after that.

- The rev counter would always kick into action during this stage and show pop up to between 800-1100 rpm. Now the rev counter sits at 0 rpm for the full minute even though the car is on and working fine (apart from the issue I'm talking about here). Once the rest of the display starts up after the minute the rev counter pops up to 800-1100 rpm as expected.

The car itself turns over fine on the first go and idles at what seems to be as it always has been so I don't think its the battery. Any ideas on what could be causing this?

I kinda want to get it fixed as its getting more frequent in the last week or so and I don't want to turn it on some morning and have no speedometer working for Mr Gatso Van to catch me rotten. Any ideas?

Zcott

Sounds like instrument cluster failure. My wife's '99 Focus had a similar sort of issue where the speedometer would just randomly drop to 0, and occasionally the lights on the dash would go out.

killer_penguin

New battery seemed to do the trick