Nissan Repair: Instrument panel outage, nissan frontier, pencil eraser

Question
I have a 2000 Nissan frontier. When driving at night with headlights on, approx one hour or so into the drive, the instrument panel goes out. Loss of tach, speedometer and so forth including mileage. Headlights remain on and occasionally the panel comes back on. Does fine (mostly) in day time except hot days it does the same thing if sits in hot,direct sunlight? If you can help with a possible diagnoses and remedy, it would be great.Thanks

Answer
Tony,

The Nissan Frontier is known for this problem.  I would remove the cluster and clean the connector and harness connector with a number 2 pencil eraser and reinstall.  If this does not do the trick I would be looking at a replacement cluster from a wrecking yard.