99 Windstar tach quit

The other day My wife was driving her van the tach jumped up and down the scale then it went past the numbers all the way over to the p on the gear selctor and wont come back to read RPM's has any one had this problem
Another thing today when we where driving home from the gym the speedometer was a little jumping but it went back to normal after just a few minutes of acting up:banghead: If anyone could just give any ideals that would be great the van only has 113,000 miles on it and one month to pay on it but it trying to get traded Thanks Chopperpad.

chopperpad,

Can you tell me a little more ? Does the battery light come on, speedometer go back and forth ? Have you ever changed the alternator ?

AvalonJohn

No the battery light doesn't come on the speedometer only acted up once
and the alt is factory but the tach is all the way over touching the P on the
gear selector it hasn't moved since it did all of this. Thanks chopperpad
P.S. it never gave a sign or acted up before all of a sudden.

My wife's windstar started doing the same thing about two weeks ago. The tach, speedometer, fuel gage, and temp gage start dancing back and forth. After driving a couple minutes, it will usually stop and all the needles will snap into their proper positions. However, the tach needle got bent on the tip because when I put the shift lever in park, the shift indicator snagged the tach needle. This is hard to diagnose because it is so intermittant. It has been terribly hot here and I suspect temperature may be contributing to the problem. My hunch is the instrument panel harness may have a bad connection or a problem with the panel ground because all the gages do read properly when they are not dancing around. I would appreciate any suggestions.

rogerdey

We are having a similar problem with our 99 Windstar except it started with the gas gauge flying from full to empty. The alert comes on at random saying a door is ajar when it is not. There are random alarm beeps and buzzings without indication of what is wrong. The rear heat/air turns off and on no matter where the switch postion is. There is often a clicking under the dash when the rear heat and air are funning. Then the lights on the dash panel started flickering and it has evolved into a huge electrical problem. The rear exterior turn signals do not work but the front do. The interior lights and rear exterior lights stay on at all times even with the key off and out. The door locks work randomly. After having it serviced the problem continues and now the front right turn signal comes on at random and stays on. With the fuses pulled that were related to the lights that were on the battery still went dead because something is still obviously on and draining it. We had to have the transmission replaced at the 80,000 mile mark and the O/D light still comes on. We are at quandry as to what to do about this. OUt Tranny shop said they fix 7-8 Ford Windstars a week for failed transmissions! Our local Ford dealer is very unreputible and will break things as they fix it to insure a return visit so everyone here travels to two other dealers 45 and 60 minutes away. They are so busy they cannot look at our van until next week. What do we do? Viewing the nhtsa site I see there are many others with similar problems. Help:banghead:

That almost sounds like the BCM under the dash.. But if you have a drain on your Battery this will cause the same thing to happen. When a Battery get low on these things they do weird stuff. I think if you locate the cause for the drain it might solve the problem... Hope this helps..

As for your inside lights staying on try cleaning the contact on the rear latch.. You will have to pull the rear door panel off because the switch contacts are internal. Start with that first.. and clean all door contacts on the sliding doors as well.