Nissan Repair: 2000 Nissan Xterra check engine soon, vehicle speed sensor, gauge speedometer

Question
I have a 2000 Nissan Xterra with 75K miles on it. I recently ran into a problem where, in the middle of driving, my dash gauges freeze. In other words, I lose my fuel gauge, speedometer and even my electronic odometer. Everything is reset after I shut down the car for a while. This happened about a week ago, and occured twice mroe at random times. Then yesterday, the same problem occurred along with the check engine soon light. Any idea of what I should expect in terms of repairs?

Answer
Darren,

Take the cluster out and clean the connection where the harness plugs in.  Use a number two pencil eraser to lightly scrub the contacts on both the cluster and the harness and put it back together.  If this does not do the trick the resistor on the back of the cluster is going out.  It cuts the voltagge down to nine volts as the twelve volts the car puts out is too much for the cluster so they step the voltage down with this small resistor.  The check engine light is probably due to the computer freaking out since it gets the vehicle speed from the cluster.  And, if connection is lost the computer sets a code.  Go to Autozone or Checker and get the code read for free and it will probably be the vehicle speed sensor error which will confirm what I am writing here.