6 Stepper Motor Repair Kit x27.168 Chevrolet GM GMC 2003-2006 Silverdo, Suburban, Sierra, Yukon, Tahoe +

After sitting on my bench for almost a month, I finally got around to installing these. I've very pleased with them, they work well and appear to be the genuine GM replacements as advertised. The tach was toast on my truck, the rest were still functional, but I replaced them all anyway so as not to repeat this job 5 more times in the near future. Installation was pretty easy for me, but I am a mechanic and have experience with circuit board repairs. If you are reasonably mechanical, this will be an easy fix. If you are not mechanical, this one is not beyond your reach, but you need to make sure to review the instructions, video and also some other resources as needed. This took me about 25 minutes start to finish, but for the those most I would give yourself a good hour and a half so that you can take your time. The video they have is very helpful if you are not familiar with this repair, there are also many YouTube videos on hoe to perform this from start to finish, and I highly recommend watching them till you are comfortable with the process. You will need a de-soldering tool for this, I am not a solder-wick fan, so I picked up a cheap bulb type de-soldering iron for around $25, and it works well. You will also need electronics solder, the really really small stuff to avoid making a mess of things. This is a rather delicate soldering job, so the small tips and small solder wire are important, it's really easy to mess up a solder pad and/or short a trace out by using the wrong stuff, this is all covered in all the videos I've seen. If you are not experienced at soldering, practice first! This is unforgiving work, if you mess it up, you'll be buying a new cluster. It only takes a tiny solder tack on each pin, make sure it's solid, but don't melt a blob on there, it should look like it did before when you are done. Also, only heat it up enough to get the job done, too much heat will cook the new steppers and/or the board. Both are pretty heat resistant but neither are heat-proof. The included tool for the gauge needle removal works well, but it's not entirely needed. The needles pull off fairly easily, but then again I have an iron grip... Just be careful and pry straight up after setting the toll under the needle. I had no breakage, but I can see where you could break a needle easily by not prying straight. I did not use any og the bulb replacements that were included as I had no burned out bulbs to replace, so I cannot comment on the bulbs other than they appear to be correct. Like I said, I'm pleased with this, but be warned that this is definitely in the medium to advanced skill level type of repair depending on your background. Proceed carefully.

After being quoted $320 plus labor by the dealer for a rebuilt instrument cluster I figured there must be a more cost-effective solution. This kit works well for someone with basic mechanical and soldering skills and can save a lot of money for an hour or two (max) of work. Be sure to have a very fine tip soldering iron and solder sucker tool. Just buy them if you need to. It did take a couple tries to get all of the gauges to zero out correctly but Fred quickly responded to an email and the problem was solved. Since most people probably don't have the test setup he used in his video, I suggest installing only the back half of the instrument cluster housing and installing in in the vehicle. This way, after plugging it in, it is easy to play with the needles to get them to correctly drop to zero when the engine is turned off. A last note about setting the needles, turn them counter-clockwise until the stepper motor shaft stops turning. Then turn the needles on the shots until they are set to zero. This is a good starting place to begin the adjustment process. I was then able to carefully snap the front part of the housing without removing it from the dashboard and risking messing up the calibration of the needles. Note that the kit only includes 4 bulbs. My instrument cluster has a total of 12 bulbs so not all could be replaced. Fortunately only 2 were burned out so this kit did the job at least for new.

As far as the kit it is great. The motors are good quality. The needle removal tool works perfect! Before installing yourself please read below!! This kit has everything you need. My speedometer motor was messing up. That was the main one I wanted to replace. I un-soldered the old one and soldered the new one in. I also replaced the tach, fuel and transmission temp motors while I was at it (even though they were ok) Long story short I ended up messing up the traces in the speedometer one. I took the instrument board to an electronics repair. The guy looked at it and determined that the trace/solder rivet was probably damaged on the center layer of the board as it is a triple layer circuit board. He said basically when I un-soldered the old motor it pulled the solder rivet out with it. There is absolutely no way of repairing the center layer of the circuit board. So now all the gauges work EXCEPT the speedo which is the important one. I'm a very dexterous/mechanical guy. Replacing these motors aren't rocket surgery. But I wish I would have taken the new motors and my instrument board to the electronics shop. It would have only cost me $60-120 in labor. They charge $60/hr. Now I'm going to have to buy a remanufactured one for around $500. I get about $300 back for core charge. The point is to make sure you don't use too hot of an iron!! You will damage your board if you do.

Worked perfectly for my 2005 Suburban. All gauges and lights work perfectly now. The individual packaging of each stepper motor was brilliant. Each motor, with its delicate pins, was in perfect condition. Don't forget to recalibrate your pins when done. There are a lot of videos on YouTube on how to do that. I'm 100% satisfied with my purchase. It was worth every penny.

If you are not patient do not try Do It Yourself. Make sure you have the appropriate tools. Be patient very patient taking the dash apart.