hmm ive seen the whole thing light up before, and after i took it out and fixed the cold solder points, the clock held time... and its still "working" the clock works and the coolant buzzer works... door and ebrake too... is all this possible with a bad cluster? is it fixable or do i gotta buy another?

 

You can try and do it yourself, by removing the old solder from where the circuit board meets the plug terminals inside the Idiot light cluster. then once the old solder is removed (I normally use a solder sucker) then you can flow new solder in.

I do have most models already rebuilt as well on my webstore

 

I did do it my self!!! removed the old solder from the board where the plug terminals are. Flowed in the good stuff...

maybe im not checking the ground right? I left my multimeter on dc >20v and put the red probe to the yellow/blue and then put the black probe to the bolt above the cpu and also tried the brake lever(the metal part) got no reading... would that mean that the ground was correct? im not very experienced with the multimeter... obviously.
i also did it on the continuity setting, and the meter didnt react

Also, i would assume that the beeping with the door open being feint at first then getting to the volume it should be after prodding a bit is a bad thing?

 

I'm not sure if those are good ground points, but if not, you can ground it to an existing ground wire (should be solid black).

 

If it turns off when yu remove the batt, that means the alt is bad. .......

When i remove my batt and turn on lights & subs the alt makes noises since its going bad but it still keeps the car running

 

There is two ways to check ground with a multi-meter.

One is to set the meter on Voltage. You would take the red lead of your meter to a known 12+ volt source, the black lead of the meter to the wire you want to check ground on. When there is ground on the black lead, the meter will read 12+ volts.

The other way is to use the Resistance scale (sometimes called the Ohms scale). On this set up you take the black wire to a known ground and probe wire you want to test with the red lead. When you have ground you will have close to .0 resistance on your meter.

So if you were probeing the yel/blu you would need to do one of those two ways to check it. You wouldn't check it by setting it to voltage and then probing it between the wire and ground.

Also if something is activating while using your meter, either you have a very crappy meter or you have blown fuses in the car.

 

i get 11.4 v when i ground the yellow/blue w/ the key on.