The family finally hit the dash of the '99 Caravan hard enough to knock the tach needle off, due to intermittent lack of any gauges. I hear shops quote $800 for installing a "new part" [yeah right].


So today I got around to fixing it.
BTW you DO NOT have to remove ANY of the bulbs from the circuit board.
Broken solder junction....
On a well supported terminal block.
Weird, but it happens a lot I guess on these.

Lots of screws, not that big of a deal. Easy repair once accessed, for anyone that can solder.

Evidently the gages go to random positions when not ON, so in order to get the Tach and Speedo needles right at zero at zero, I had to half install the half a dash, turn on the ignition, then press the needes on with the gages thinking they should be at 0 RPM and 0 MPH.

Oh, huh, some of the twist-in 194 illumination bulbs are burned out.
Might as well ck 'em all while it's apart. Three BOB's [Burned out Bulb].

Get out spares, tug at bulb. Does NOT come out of the 1/4 turn plastic holder. Tug more, nope. Get spare holder and bulb from stash, ayep older Olds parts will interchange.

Just dash to the store and get new units?
NO.
Though the Caravan's bulbs DO NOT come out of the holder, at the store they have ONLY bulbs that need a holder, which I already have plenty of.

Oh, PS, bulbs cost $2.50-$5 EACH now. Would be like $10 to get the 3 BOB's replaced. Hope you don't want to put ALL new ones in. WTH? Amazon.com has LED lamps for that kind of coin, if you can wait a day or three for delivery.

Add bulbs and holders to the boneyard list I guess.

This is more like it

but still can't put these in the Caravan's OEM holders.

Aha, BULB HOLDERS
.
.
.
"currently unavailable"

Road test shows reasonable tach and speedo readings now. All from a broken solder joint.

 

Glad you got it fixed yourself for little cost. All of why I hate electronics, particularly in places where they can be done without.
I had rented a Grand Caravan in 2006 and 2007 for long road trips on the west coast and BOTH would randomly loose all power to the gauge cluster. This was bad as I could not tell when i needed gas! They usually worked again after a couple shutdowns and restarts. Probably similar problem as yours.