ELECTRICAL GURUS - gauge problems / under hood wiring

[JeffD]

I have been all over the search and cont find my problem.

82 4x4 350/th400

I have been trying to get the gauges on the instrument cluster working. After getting all the senders (new btw) hooked up, They still did not work

I pulled the cluster all apart and cleaned the contacts, now my oil gauge works ( i think ) it reads about half way between 30 and 0 but rises as I rev the engine, Now the wire I hooked to the sender that I placed by the oil filter housing is  Dark Blue Blue. People on other sites are telling me that it should be tan ( the only tan I have goes to the fuel gauge and its working). Anyway, When I ground the blue wire it pegs the oil gauge.

The temp gauge pegs when I hook up the green wire to the sender ( might be a bad sender, but is new)

The Volt gauge does not work. I have power to the guage (on one leg of the terminals in back of auge) but not to the other. ( Do you think the gauge could be bad ) I have the cover off of the cluster is how I am checking the power behind the gauge.

[bake74]

     You can have the cluster apart and the gages should still work (they do not ground from the plastic cluster).  It really sounds to me that you have a short in your cluster wiring, which is a real pain because you can not diagnose it unless you are there with a measuring device ( meter or circuit tester of some sort).
     The way I would tackle this is first make sure the plug that plugs in the cluster is getting power on all the circuits, then I would start checking the printed circuit board to make sure 1 it is powering each gage correctly, and 2 that no 2 circuits are crossed and shorting out the printed circuit board.  Good luck and keep us posted, someone else will chime in I am sure.