I have an 06 f250. My speedo starting "zeroing" at 35, 40, 45, 30, 20, 35, etc. It works, but the needle thinks that zero is something in the neighborhood of the 20s or 30s, etc.

Then, sometimes it would work just fine for a day and then I would notice it would stop settling at zero and would settle in the 20s or 30s or so and then work from there. So, i'm always doing 120mph!

Anyway, I popped the negatives on the batteries for a bit and the speedo worked properly for the rest of that day. Next morning, back to the 20s or 30s for zero. I took it to dealer and they charged me 100 bucks for a diag and said the cluster had a "short". They wanted 700 bucks for a new cluster. I said no thanks.

Anyway, anyone have this happen? I don't trust the dealers out here as far as I can throw them, so I don't know what to think. Does this sound like a cracked solder on the cluster possibly that is shorting in and out? Doesn't make sense to be a short in this case. I'm going to pull cluster and magnify board to see what I can see.

I haven't tried to hold in trip button and then start to get to diag menus yet, if that will even work on my 06. Has anyone used a cluster repair place they like? Anyone know of one in socal? san diego?

Does anyone know if I pull the cluster, can I just plug it all back in w/out having to do anything to the onboard computer to get the cluster to start working again?

thanks.
Oh, yeah, no warranty, so i'm stuck with this one. 50k miles, so that's the end of that.