jAAAmes

long story short, i replaced the stock cluster face with a white one, put everything back together, and the needles were reading off. so, thinking they might magically recalibrate themselves, i disconnected the battery and reconnected it only to now have a car that will barely turn over, and when it finally does, idles very low, 200-300rpms... and almost no response at all from pushing the gas, even all the way down. i even tried following the CPU relearning proccess from the manual, but didnt change anything. could anybody possibly know whats wrong? :'( its my only car and i cant afford to have it down for even a day D:

wayne613

So you didn't replace the cluster itself, just the front overlay, yes? And you disconnected the battery...You didn't touch anything else at all?

No, the needles have to be put in place exactly from the same position as you took them off. The cluster will NOT adjust these for you. The easiest method is to just temporarily hook it up while the plastic cover is off, turn it on so everything 0's out, then get someone (if not yourself) with steady fingers to put them on, as in straight on at the 0 position, making sure to make it straight on to the motor's needle with the gauge needle. If you adjust at all as you're pushing down, you'll have to re-zero it. Doubting this is idling at 300rpms, below like 450 I think they'll stall, period, probably higher. Likely it's idling at close to what it should, 760-780, but your needle is off.

It sounds off-hand like you may wish to check your TB if you are getting no response from the throttle, and it's hard to start, but DOES start. As odd as it sounds, this sounds unrelated to your yanking of the cluster since I've driven around without one completely for a time. And it only reads what the computer is seeing, it has no direct bearing to the throttle or much of anything else aside from TCS (and passive anti-theft system if cluster is replaced completely).

I would however make sure to check the pins on the back of the cluster, making sure you have not bent any just to be on the safe side.

jAAAmes

thank you for the input. ill have to reset the needles manually like that i suppose. turned out the problem wasnt related at all to the cluster anyways. by complete coincidence, something went wrong with the TB, i took it to ford and they adjusted a spring that was dislodged in the mechanism or something, and was choking it up. apparently they just put it back in right and that fixed it back up.