Instrument cluster/meter failure? '05 feejer

So a couple of weeks ago I come out of the restaurant from lunch, hop on my trusty steed, turn the key on, and nothing happens with the gauges at all. I fiddle with the ignition key and kill switch thinking one is going wonky on me, nothing there. I proceed to start the bike and she starts and runs fine, but no gauges. About 10 seconds later, everything comes to life as it should have upon key on. Now it's been doing it intermittently ever since. And today I rode 5 miles from another town and not once did the gauges come up. I've diagnosed the meter assembly within the whole cluster to be faulty and the source of the problem. Don't know if it's random or the fact I wash it almost weekly and possible water intrusion??? Have any of you ran into this before?

Does the speedo and tach always work correctly? Do the display back-lights work?

If the needle gauges work, the Meter Assembly is correctly communicating with the ECU. If the Meter Assembly were truly not working the ECU would record a communication error, there are 4 possible communication errors. It is possible for the Meter Assembly to be communicating with the ECU but the display remains blank, however, the speedo and tach should still work.

The communications between the ECU and the Meter Assembly is serial and takes place over just one wire using data packets. Since Meter Assembly information is sent on one wire either it works or it doesn't, if communications are bad between the ECU and the Meter Assembly there should be an error code.