Hi. I have a warning cluster issue where my clock isn’t working at all. No matter what I try, I can’t seem to get it to work. I’ve taken it apart and I do know that these boards have a tendency to have very bad solder joints, but where do I start checking? I’m fairly new to the RX-7 community and I’m completely lost in making this clock work. Are there any guides I can follow? Yes, I have checked the ROOM fuse and it’s fine

 

I think the general approach is you just reflow all the solder joints and cross your fingers. As far as I'm aware, there are no detailed schematics of the warning light cluster.

 

I'm dealing with the same issue. I reflowed all components on the daughterboard, including the ribbon cable pins on the main board where they feed the daughterboard. This is just what I did, not saying this was correct etc. Unfortunately it made no difference..but I tried!

I did notice my clock has a burned looking place in the glass part almost like its the LCD or whatever type of display it is. Also my fuses aren't blown.

Perhaps I'm OCD with wanting things to work, I ordered a whole repaired IDIOT cluster online... apparently comes with a 5yr warranty. It has not yet arrived, PM me if you want to know the details and how it works out for me.

 

From what I saw when I took mine apart, the actual clock display may be VFD (Vacuum Flourescent Display), not an LCD. They work similar to a vacuum tube display. Video here

 

That is normal, don't worry about it. The clock is indeed a VFD.

Ideally one would re-solder everything with new solder, but you can get away with re-flowing everything, or even just components that'd be susceptible to cracking: connectors, anything big that could vibrate. Even without a board level schematic, you can follow the traces from the input connector to check at least +12 (BATT), +12 (ACC/IGN) and ground to the daughterboard and clock chip. The connector layout is in the wiring diagram / FSM. Measure caps too if you can.

 

I've re-flowed the connector pins and it wasn't nearly as effective as desoldering them, removing them, cleaning the corrosion off, and re-soldering them. IIRC just a reflow of every pin in the unit lasted around 6 months to a year before the clock started flickering again.

Re-flowing the rest of the boards in the unit usually works well, but the connector pins in particular I would definitely recommend removing and cleaning.