My Daughter gave me this car. The issue is when you start it the gauges all come up and instantly drop to 0. The windows won’t work. It has no power and the alternator begins to charge at 18 volt instead of 12. Which boils the battery, the battery light comes on and check engine light stays on. And to fix it I have to get under hood. Remove positive battery cable and then spark it on the positive post. Then replace the positive cable connection. Next restart the car and it does okay for a while. If we don’t spark the cable the wrench comes on and the cars part that run with battery slugish wont work no rpms and the engine kinda whisles but the car is still running but must shut off engine imediatly we replaced the emission computer and still does this any advise or how to fix would be greatly appreciated
Not much information on this type of issue and have not come across this myself. Just complaints about the gauges going out for various reasons. I will go ahead and post this in case someone has some helpful guidance.
Rich545 from fixya did say:
I had this same problem with my 2006 Ford Five Hundred. All the gauges on the instrument panel would go to zero as if the vehicle was off and the “idiot” lights would come on as well as the reverse lights. After replacing the cluster gauge unit, I was able to determine that was not the problem, so don’t waste your money buyin new gauges.
The problem was found to be several cracked/broken wires that run from the main computer of the vehicle to the charging system. It cost me $ 190.00 for the Ford dealership to locate the cracked wires and repair them. Vehicle works great now.