Hello, everyone. This is my first post here. I have a 2003 X-type 2.5 with roughly 176K miles on it.
Last year it started intermittently starting and here are the symptoms: the car won't start (no crank), part of the instrument cluster doesn't light up there are also no turns signal lights and the fuel gage doesn't respond. However the next day it would start and go, while driving i lost the turn signals and the fuel gage, but the car still ran. It seems to me that there is a broken wire or bad connection somewhere.

If anyone has seen this or has any advice I would appreciate.

Thanks, Jag-One

 

Next time it doesn't start, try jumping the power (big wire) and signal (small wire) terminals to see if it turns over. That'll pinpoint or eliminate the starter. If it starts its even more likely that it's part of a compound issue with the cluster etc.

 

The very first thing is to verify that the battery connections are tight, and that the battery is fully charged. Without doing this you are just guessing!

 

Is the battery up to it's job? I.e. is still good?
Check ground contacts. If you have an automatic, one of the mayor ground contacts is on top of the transmission (under the battery-box).
Did you check for OBDII codes?

And now I am plain guessing, but on an educated level, having a background with "switches":
Working sometimes, and not other times, could be due to a contact not working... - this means normally "switches", but since I have a feeling that the high current required to start the engine is not flowing thru the actual ignition switch, there should be a starter-relay somewhere, and there are contacts (including bad contacts) in relays, too.
But don't fully rule out the actual ignition switch - even a low current switch can have dirty / damaged contact surfaces...

And the "sometimes" and "sometimes not" issue could also have its foundations in an intermittent short circuit, most often found in electrical cables...