Why does my "check gauges" light keep flashing in my 89 S10? The gauges all read normal.?

Question

I had a new sending unit put in it in December, could it be bad?

Its a pickup if that helps. It started last week, did it for 4 days, stopped for 5 days and now its doing it again.

Answer 1

It's not the fuel pump, filter, spark plugs, O2 sensor or anything related to the emmisions system, as these would turn on the "service engine soon" light. "check gauges" light can only be activated by these things; Low oil pressure (below 12 lbs or so), high coolant temp (over 260), low or high battery voltage (under 8 or over 18 or something to that effect) or possibly even low fuel.

However you say all gauges indicate fine, so moving on.

If I recall correctly, since I used to own one, some of the sensors on that series truck are redundant, for example, the oil pressure has 2 sensors. one is a simple switch that turns the check gauges light on, and the other sensor feeds the gauge itself, and they may even be on opposite sides of the engine block. My current truck has that setup.

It's probably a bad sensor, on which circuit I can't say. either a gauge sensor is stuck in normal range, or an idiot light sensor is bad, most likely the idiot light sensor. common sensors to go bad are the oil pressure light, and coolant temp.

Try checking the codes too, sometimes it stores one, although not many. You don't need anything more than a paperclip to do this on 1982-1995 gm cars. find the diagnostics connector under the drivers side dash and with the ignition on, but engine stopped, stick a bent paperclip into the TOP RIGHT TWO TERMINALS to bridge them. The "service engine soon" light will flash a code 12 ( blink once, pause, blink twice). It will flash a code 12 three times and then flash each additional stored code 3 times, before flashing code 12 again. (for example a code 23 is blink twice, pause, blink three times) write down the code it stores and look it up here: http://www.troublecodes.net/gm/...

If no code is stored, It's probably a bad sensor, if a code is stored, it will tell you the sensor that's bad.
in short either way, It's probably a sensor.

Hope this helps. -John

Answer 2

Try disconnecting and reconnecting the positive battery cable on the battery. This resets the computer.If the "check guages" light is gone,it was a glitch somewhere. If not,get a code reader hooked up to it to find out the culprit.

Answer 3

The check gages light will flash if anythings goes outside of range. Apparently something is going outside of range. Most likely voltage dropping below normal levels. Battery good and cables clean and tight?

Answer 4

i had an 89 s10 that did the same thing, after putting in a new cpu. i went over to autozone, and they do free checks on their computers and they tell you what is wrong, and what you need to replace. in my case it was the oxygen sensor located on the exhaust manifold, and there was something else, but its been a couple years, so don't remember. go to autozone for sure, and have them test it.

Answer 5

A lot of people got the check engine problems when the weather turned to 40 below zero.
Kept the auto repair shops very busy. Time to bring it to your favorite mechanic. It is probably something very minor, just related to temp.

Answer 6

its flashing cause something is wrong and the CPU picked it up and it registered more than once otherwise it would of ignored it.

basic guages are not gonna tell you if something is wrong like a miss firing cylinder or a dead cylinder or a bad O2 sensor, etc. they just show oil pressure, gas, temp....aka dummy guages.

Have a mechanic put a computer on it to see what the codes are to find out what the issue is.