here's a picture from turborx7.com, of the 1986 brochure. It's a little known fact that
the '86 had That orange, rather than blueish, colored clock that all the other years had. I think the main reasons for the switch were: brightness, better reliability as far as the mechanics of the clock goes (a friend told me the phosphorescence/lumenescence to make the orange died out faster than did the blue), and of course, infamous cold solder joints. I'm curious to see if any of you have one of these clocks that actually works. I'd love to get one in my '88, just to be the dude who's got it, hahah.

Anyway, thanks for filling in my curiousity.

Landon

 

I have an 86, but as the electronics all need to be redone, I'm not sure the clock works. Really, I've never looked at my clock before.

 

Pele Has a working one, and he rebuilds all FC electronics. PM him if you need something rebuilt.

If I can remember right from what he told me, the only difference between the different colored clocks is the plastic shield in front of the display. The 86's is orange instead of clear/bluish.
The circuit board is the same.

86's also had orange numbers on the odometers.

As far as it goes, I think the orange clock looks better. The white one seems like it's trying to hard and should be in a late 80's early 90's movie for the super rad digital efffect.

 

wow no way, that's really interesting. I'll have to look for an 86 cover then, & see if this holds true.

I've done all the soldering/circuit repair in my car myself, so currently all those old luxuries are working. Thanks for the info!

 

i have one but it keep flashing on and off so its kinda working i guess...

 

Set it?

 

In my 86 it is working fine. In my previous FC (87) it wasn't however. What I'd like to see is a fully functional wiper switch in a FC hehe.

 

All of mine work. The user "Pele" on the forum here rebuilds them for $75 and they come with a warranty.

 

me and chad have a few in the barn man... lol.

 

mine works 100% and its never been rebuilt. I feel special

 

The switch in my N/A worked perfect too. The one in my 10th AE worked for about 6 months, now only med speed works. Need to send it to Pele.

 

Actually that brochure picture was from my website, it was just copied by turborx7.com. I don't care that much, it just would have been nice of them to ask first and credit the images back to my site...

Anyway, my car had the orange clock when I bought it. I swapped it for a different cluster with the regular green clock because the orange one stopped working and I didn't want to bother resoldering it.

 

Bump lol, anyone still have one AND pictures of it in action? Or better yet, have a known orange one that they'd part with?

 

Hmmm, the RX-7 I got my doors from in the junkyard was a 1986. I have to return my doors within the next few weeks to get my whopping $24 core charges back, I'll run in and see if it's still there and if the warning cluster is there, too. I needed to grab a few other things anyway.

If you find yourself near LKQ in Tampa on Causeway, there's an RX-7 all the way in the back on the right hand side. Last row, near the fence. That's the 1986 I got my doors off of.

 

Oh the grey one? I actually got to that car the day it was parked, and pulled the warning cluster. Resoldered it, installed, only to find it was a white clock. I think the orange one's are even more prone to failing, and there was a recall on them, so people would take them back to the dealer when the cars were new & exchange for the newer ones.

I've thought about finding the actual clock LCD screen from an electronics store/supplier & just swapping that out, but have no idea where to start.

 

Yeah, the grey one, lol. It has some random door parts lying around now, as I thought they were going to try and nickel and dime me for a bunch of stuff I did not need.

 

All it is is the face portion. When you take it apart, the board and LCD are the same. Also if your clock is not working, all you have to do is suck the major solder points and then resolder them with fresh solder.

 

Got one!! I'd heard it was just the plastic insert that colored the clock, but wanted to confirm it myself.. It is! Another member on here had one, which luckily for me, was orange.

You can tell if it's orange before you even plug it to power. Just hold the whole cluster under a light. A white/blueish clock will be violet looking in the clock area, but the orange one is a deep red-orange. It's obvious. It's all colored by the filter overtop the clock LCD screen that does the coloring. So in theory, you could just cut out your clocks existing filter, get some thin plastic sheet, and lay it over top and have any color clock.

That being said, I'm finally the owner of one, and am happy lol

 

Congrats! Id like one as well, but the s5 style emblems look so much better I can't personally justify going back to the s4 "building block" style, even though I do prefer the orange clock.

 

Apparently, there shouldn't be any major issues in just taking the S5 cluster apart and putting in an orange filter. I kind of do like the look of the orange clock.