Jerry Sommer

My time and temprature and gear indicators were mostly out like I hear others talk about. Since I do electronics repair I thought I would look and see what was going on. What I found is there are three ribbon cables that connect things together. The types of ribbon cable used in the instrument cluster are one with copper foil in it for the middle one. The two that cause the trouble are the two that use what looks like aluminum in them. To make one they lay down a piece of clear plastic and then use narrow strips of what I think is paint. Then there is another piece of plastic glued over it. Sort of a sandwich. The problem I found on mine is at the end that goes onto the circuit board. The one piece of plastic is shortened a little so the bare strips touch the copper pads on the circuit board. The seem to use some type of glue to hold them in place as well as a small rubber strip set in the upper plastic the snaps onto the circuit board to press it down. The connections between the alunium and the copper goes bad some how and looses contact. I bought a conductive pen the writes with a paint with a lot of silver in it and redrew the last quarter inch or so of trace. I cleaned the copper up real good and put it back together. All light up real nice now. WARNING This isn't an easy job due to the size. I used a binocular microscope to work with. Jerry

oneofayykind

Jerry...is there any way you can send me pictures with more detailed instructions of how to do this? If I could fix this it would be amazing instead of having to replace the stupid thing. I am pretty handy but need to see what to do. Please help me if possible.

Jerry Sommer

A little hard to photograph now as it is back in my car. It is not hard to find the ribbon cables once you have it out and the plastic parts off. Just don't pull the ribbon cables off of the small glass plates. They are liquid crystal displays. They turn sections dark whey you put voltage to the sections. That is why they have back lights. The needles were on the guages fairly tight and a little tricky to put back on in the proper place. The speedo doesn't seem to have a positive stop to it. I had to drive it forward a bit and then put the needle on in the zero position. I just put it on a little way then drove and stopped to see if it was in the proper place. Jerry

clk430convert01

Jerry.... How did you go about removing the cluster speedo needles once you disassembled the instrument cluster? It seems as if it may be necessary to use a needle removal tool to assure that needles pop straight out?

Serndipity

Hi Jerry,

Interesting.

I'm going to get around to fix mine as well. Not having taken the cluster out yet, my guess was that the problem might be cold solder joints.

I believe I understand what you found (i.e. intermittent electro-mechanical contact were between the ribbin cable and the ciciruit board).

Coule of questions.

1. Why do the needles have to come off?

Based on other cars that have this problem, I expected to pull the cluster and have to remove a cover of some kind fastened with TORX screws to get access to the back of the time/temperature dispalys.

2. You mentioned not to mess with the end of the ribbon cable that attaches to the displays. So....it's the other end of the cable that has the contact problem?

3. Curious on how you removed the cluster....the hook tool or suction cups.

Thanks for sharing this with us.

clk430convert01

Serenity....DO NOT use the suction cup. I purchased one today to extract the cluster and snapped off the clear plastic face on the cluster. Once my pulse rate and foul language neutralized, I wedged it out with my fingers by pulling the edges until it came free. I've heard of others unbolting a panel underneath and pushing it out from the back but that appears to not be necessary.

Mr Pie

Just use the tools you can get from the dealer or off of eBay or use a shaped clothes hanger.

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