Weird electrical problem?

My father has a 2000 4runner with the 3.4l, 2wd. The other day, the stupid check engine light came on again. Haven't had time to get it looked at. The past two times it been that 071 code that we thought we fixed.


Well last night he was going up a hill near our house when the truck sounded like it was in a lower gear and the rpms on the dash went up. He noticed a lack of power, the noise, and the reverse light on the dash light up along with the drive light. When he got to the house, I quickly looked at it and the light was lightly lit or fully lit depending on what I was doing. Didn't know what to think.


Forward to today and there doesn't appear to be any problems until tonight. When we driving home when the problem happens again. But this time my father notices the problem appears when he turns on the headlights. Turn headlights off, no problem.


I was thinking it's some weird electircal issue or something to do with the transmission. We're going to get the code off the truck to see if it's the same problem as before or some new issue. Any ideas?

 

Ended up taking the truck in and it apparently has a bad instrument cluster. When the cluster is out, no problem. They said there is a bad diode or something when is causing all the problems.


Anyone know of a good place to get this fixed? I used to use mr wizard but it looks like they don't work on these. The shop says there is a place over in phoenix that fixes these. Any idea what this might cost?