Aluminum foil and a dead dash

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Jul 16, 2011 | 08:33 PM

mr2dude9161

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Aluminum foil and a dead dash

I decided to put some aluminum foil around the inside of my dash ro reflect more of the led lighting on the inside. I put everything back and the whole cluster is dead. I am not sure if there is a relay or a fuse that i can replace but nothing works.

I did everything very careful making sure nothing would make contact but i think something must have touched

Does anyone have any ideas on this.

Any help would be appreciated.

Jul 16, 2011 | 09:01 PM

rx7rcer09

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From: Hilliard, OHIO

why would you use Foil? your asking for issues with grounding and so on. i recommend using better quality LED's

Jul 16, 2011 | 09:32 PM

Montego

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If I had to guess I'd say taht the foil is shorting out the dash. Remove it and hopefully it didn't fry something.

Jul 16, 2011 | 09:58 PM

Wompa164

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lol

Jul 16, 2011 | 10:55 PM

mr2dude9161

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Well i have seen it done and it helps distribute all the light everywhere. I thinks its too late cause my blinkers dont work and my hazards do. The lights work on the dash but none of the gauges work. Any ideas?

Jul 17, 2011 | 01:32 AM

ZE Power MX6

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Probably shorted something, have you remove all the foil yet?

Jul 17, 2011 | 02:07 AM

mr2dude9161

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Yup its all out

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Jul 17, 2011 | 02:44 AM

IWINULUZ

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probably blew your blinker switch in column or i dont know if rx7s have flash caps never had to deal with that issue but another possibility. Good luck bro

Jul 18, 2011 | 08:37 PM

FFWD_FD

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Jul 18, 2011 | 08:55 PM

#10

rx7rcer09

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From: Hilliard, OHIO

is the dash still dead? i would say it has something to do with poor wiring of the LED's, check all connections and make sure you didnt short anything out. Go buy a volt meter and check if power is getting to the actual connectors.

Jul 19, 2011 | 02:31 AM

#11

BlueTuner

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im still confused on the foil, why?

did you get it to work?

Jul 19, 2011 | 10:34 PM

#12

RustyGent

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http://www.cardomain.com/ride/261632...a-rx-7/page-34

This is from Theorie's page. Maybe he can explain how he laid his foil and his results.

Jul 20, 2011 | 07:54 AM

#13

mr2dude9161

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Yeah i got my gauges to work somewhat. My RPMs were off by like 1000 and I never messed with the needles.

There is also a fuse called Meter in the driver side kick panel that is for the gauges. I didnt want to take any chances with a bad cluster and purchased a 2002 white cluster from a member on here.

Thanks guys, but I dont think I will be opening up this new cluster. LOL

Jul 20, 2011 | 10:14 AM

#14

theorie

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Quote:

Originally Posted by RustyGent

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/261632...a-rx-7/page-34

This is from Theorie's page. Maybe he can explain how he laid his foil and his results.

Here's how I laid mine...

I checked to make sure nothing would ground out on the foil. None of the gauge units come into contact with it. I haven't had any problems except for one of the bulbs that died recently (not because of the foil...just a defective plug & play LED bulb...easy to swap).

Perhaps the problem isn't the foil, maybe you didn't put the gauges back in correctly. The screws that hold the gauges into the cluster housing are actually power, ground, and signal connectors so if you used different screws or didn't use all of them then that could be part of the problem.

Recently I was thinking I want to swap out the white LEDs for Red EL-Wire. Kind of tired of the white and want to go with red instead. I think the EL-Wire can work on the car's dimmer controller, and it might be easier to get the light diffused evenly.