Hello! This is my first post and question on here. I have a 2003 Vanden Plas in excellent condition that I drove daily for years. I’ve had it stored now for about 2 years and when I got it out of storage I have major issues. I did put in a new battery right away to eliminate any issues with that. It starts fine but none of the gauges work, the message center scrolls through every warning message that it has continuously, the odometer is constantly spinning like the car is moving 1000 mph. The car has about 110000 miles on it, but the odometer won’t stop and is continuously spinning when the car is running. Also the shifter release won’t work and I have to manually release it to get it out of park. Everything worked perfectly before I stored it.
i took it to a local shop and they said it needs a new instrument cluster and that is causing all the problems.
Does this sound right? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

 

any chance of rodent damage to wiring?

 

No rodent damage that I can find.

 

Once upon a time, I drove my xj8 somewhere during the day and didn't have much power steering and thought uh-oh, my power steering is going out, another old car problem. But then it got dark before it was time to go home and I discovered that I also didn't have headlights or turn signals or anything working at the front of the car so I left it, got a ride home and went back the next day during daylight hours to drive it home. I had to get out my multimeter and download the wiring diagrams and start tracing it down, starting at the ends, lets call the headlights point A and the switches point Z, and narrowing it down to between points T and U (I forget exactly which junction it was labeled in the wiring diagram). When I took the fender liner out and looked up in there, I was surprised to find the very beginnings of a nest. She hadn't gotten around to hanging pictures on the walls yet but she was starting to decorate, including cutting wires.

Mice tend to look for hiding spots that they think you can't find and they're pretty good at it. Probably need to check that none of the wires going to the cluster are shorted somewhere else in the harness. You don't want to plug in a new cluster and have it damaged as well (and I believe they need to have matching firmware numbers and be programmed - but I have no experience with that).