From your description, I would start off with doing a reset of the on board modules. Disconenct both batteries, turn the key to run, go out and touch the 2 positive and negative battery cable ends to each other for 30 seconds to kill the keep alive memory, turn the key off, reconnect the batteries, and start it up and see if that works. I just had to help a friend last week with an 03 and the guages not working, and this fixed it. If that doesn't do it, then you need to put a scanner on it and make sure teh data is being sent and receieved to the cluster as the description of what you say teh cluster is doing is that of the data bus being shorted. I know on the 01-02's it was fairly common for the ABS module to get shorted underneath and cause all kinds of wierd issues. teh 03-05 cluster issues was to deal with the stepper motors going bad, haven't ever heard of the cluster just going dead like that before except when the data bus gets shorted.
