Dodgy Dash

[teamster1975]

Am I getting a bad rep or summit?

You Steve? Never.
Nothing wrong with a healthy dose of sarcasm

[swiss]

OK, so... there's the two connector thingies, one blue and one yellow. I unclip the wirey bits from them, then undo the eight screws around the edge... but do I also need to unscrew the connector thingies? That seemed to be doing bad things to the green film circuitry bit on the back, so I stopped. But am I right in understanding that if I get all that stuff off, there's an actual proper PCB somewhere inside? Or is it the flimsy film bit I need to be soldering?

[teamster1975]

Have a read of page two swiss
You don't touch the yellow & blue connectors; you have to split the cluster and within you will find a PCB

[swiss]

Oh, you mean the flat cable thingumybobby. OK, so it's that and the eight surrounding screws? Or is there anything else I should unscrew before just ripping it apart and forking it up royally?

[teamster1975]

Hold your horses swiss; I've got a spare set of clocks. I'll split them & post a photo when I get home from work so you can see what I mean

[swiss]

Ah, cheers me dear. Bin driving the wife's Omega automatic today (having left my own car keys in that London) and it's confused the hell out of me

[teamster1975]

Oh gawd, I ride a motorbike during the day so it's really odd for me getting in the car!

[swiss]

OK, finally got the PCB out. The clippy thing on the flat ribbon flew off and hit me in the face

Right now I'm poised over the board with a hot iron, dripping molten solder everywhere. But my question is, which connections am I meant to be resoldering?

http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p165 ... r_/PCB.jpg

[teamster1975]

To be honest I did the entire board! Also when you re-assemble it bend in those prongs a bit on that clip that attacked you
I lost the fuel gauge on mine and it was because one of those teeth wasn't pressing the flat cable onto the riser pcb hard enough

[swiss]

Right, time to go frakk up my dash then. Will report back with the results...

[swiss]

Update:

So it works. Pretty much. The previously half-arsed dials now appear, after a day's driving, to be fully-arsed. Slight problem though - the little digital clock with my mileage no longer lights up properly. It does read the digits, but really dull. Also, the battery light doesn't come on until I move the key to position 2... did I knacker a bulb or something?

[teamster1975]

The mileage bulbs may have blown; if I remember I popped them on mine when I stripped the cluster down
Don't know about the battery light though

Edit: Pull the dash cluster out but leave it plugged in & turn the ignition one click; then squeeze that pronged connector to see if the battery light comes on. I had to pop it off and re-squash the prongs a couple of times before everything worked

[swiss]

Roger, will give that go. Ta.

[swiss]

Um... damn. I think I may have soldered a short in there somewhere. The battery and mileage lights had indeed gone, but I think the speedo is blowing bulbs too... Halfords only had two, so I need to go figure which ones I don't really need...

[EDIT] OK, so there's all these warning lights that don't have bulbs... seat bets, for instance, or an open door icon. Would it hurt if I just put bulbs in every slot? Also, there's two icons I purloined working bulbs from... one was green with what looked like the headlight icon with a squiggle through the diagonal lines, and the other yellow one a bit like the fog light symbol with a squiggle through it... any idea what these are, and if I ought to get new bulbs for them...

Oh and also, it seems to me that the only things I could really colour are the clock needles. The actual numbers appear to have an orange filter behind them. My friend tried blue ones on her Rover and just wound up with darker dials. Maybe I could strip the orange out? Has anyone successfully coloured their D8 dash?

[swiss]

OK, well, all seems sorted now. Clocks work and every bulb holder has a scrapyard-fresh bulb in it. Woo!

Thanks for the help, all