My odometer/status display in the dashboard was flickering
on/off regularly - it finally got to the point where the
display was readable maybe 2% of the time, the rest of the
times the display was dark.
I disassembled the instrument cluster and noticed two things
- both part of the switching power supply that steps up the
voltage (the vacuum fluorescent display requires more than
12 V).
a) the electrolytic capacitors were bulging a bit (top
safety vent was no longer flat, but slightly convex) - a
sign that they are beginning to fail (the caps that Visteon - manufacturer of the cluster - used are pretty good ones /
I looked the part up).
I replaced these as a precautionary measure with Panasonic
FC series caps - 220 microF, 50V - bought those from DigiKey.
b) Resistor R1 (a surface mounted part) had a rather
questionable solder joint (very little solder, solder joint
looked ‘cold’) - furthermore, the resistor was not properly
aligned in the first place. Likely cause of this is that
insufficient solder was applied on its mounting pads - when
reflow soldered the solder melts, and surface tension aligns
the component to the pads.
I resoldered the resistor (though I did not realign it as I
don’t have the heated SMD tweezers and I definitely did not
want to damage the circuit board).
The odometer/status display is now working fine, at full
brightness with no flickering/cut-out.
I’ll upload pictures as well.–
Christian Stich
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