Foretravel Owners' Forum For owners and Fans of Foretravel Motorcoaches September 10, 2025 ...

No gauges in dash are working.

August 21, 2020, 11:14:52 am

I just bought a 92 Grand Villa Driving it home i noticed that the only gauge working in the dash is the oil pressure gauge. The speedometer is erratic but nothing else works including the dash lights. Any ideas?

It is the Silver Anniversary edition with the Detroit 6v92

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Re: No gauges in dash are working.

Reply #1 – August 21, 2020, 12:09:39 pm

Welcome to the Forum, and congrats on becoming the caretaker of a classic Foretravel coach!

If your '92 is the same as our '93 U280, you will have a big group of fuses under the hinged lift-up dash cover.  The cover is held down by several spring clips.  It can be kinda scary the first time you pop it up - feels like you are going to break something.  Just grab the edge and lift up.

Once the cover is raised, look for the fuse diagram on the underside of the dash cover.  Check the 10 amp fuse marked "WARN LTS GAUGES".  That fuse sends power to all the electric gauges.  The air pressure gauge is mechanical.

The only odd thing about what you describe is that your (electric) oil pressure gauge was working.  (?)  It should be on the same fuse circuit.

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Re: No gauges in dash are working.

Reply #2 – August 21, 2020, 03:04:00 pm

If your dash top has not been lifted in a long time (or ever), it really helps to have another person over a few feet to lift at the same time. There are several spring clips across the entire cover so spreading the effort is good.

After you get it open, you may want to think about making a wooden brace to hold the top open so you can work with both hands. I took a 1"x 2" piece of wood about 8 inches long. I drilled a hole about an inch from one end, painted it flat black and the with the dash top all the way open. OK, no more blather. Check the attached photo. A 5 minute project.

Pierce

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Re: No gauges in dash are working.

Reply #3 – August 21, 2020, 09:36:33 pm

Like the way that opens up

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Reply #4 – August 22, 2020, 02:40:02 pm

Update, the dash power checked out. Found the water temp gauge wire unplugged at motor, found the Transmission  temp wire broken off at sensor on trans. Still looking for tach wires. Thanks for everyone's help

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Reply #5 – August 22, 2020, 05:09:38 pm

I contacted the former owner for advice and he explained that the whole dash top actually opened up. I didn't believe him at first but then after I tried it YATZEEE! Open sez me it done opened up. It was scary for me the first time. He had already installed a wooden strip like the one pictured above.I have attached strip lighting to the dash and now have red light strip lights that illuminate the whole dash. Bada Bing Bada Boom! I'm tellin ya I feel like I know what I'm doing in this area now. I found a live wire and hooked the red lights to it. Then I found a good solid ground and attached the ground wires from the red strip lights to it. Had to install  a red covered switch in the dashboard for the lights.Looks like the cockpit of the Enterprise now.

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Re: No gauges in dash are working.

Reply #6 – August 23, 2020, 04:11:10 pm

We had a similar problem about 3 years ago. Most, but not all of our dash gauges stopped working as we were getting ready to leave Pigeon Forge. We also discovered that we had no power to our leveling system.

Brett helped us trace the problem to a solenoid located under the dash cover behind the instrument panel. Don't know if this relates to the problem you are having but just in case, here is the part that we had to replace. Let us know if we can be of any further help.

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