No Tach, Speedo or Odometer.
 

This is probably beyond my repair ability. Any idea where I can send my cluster out to get fixed. I was preparing my FD to get it listed for sale then of course the dash quits working. I have no working tach, speedo or odometer. This will probably make it difficult to sell.

I've attached a couple photos. Any suggestions would be helpful. Thank you.

Joshua


If you post some photos of the speedo board then I may be able to help. Use the zoom function or get in close to take pictures of the suspect areas on the board. I also need you to provide more information: what specific components did you replace? Did you replace them or did a solder technician do it? Do you have any prior experience behind a soldering iron?[/QUOTE]
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...a28805a1d1.jpg

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...b904ca457b.jpg

@danwatson64,

I combined your thread with this one. There is a lot more relevant info to be referenced here. When able, read through some of these posts to better understand some common problems with these boards.

@3rd-Gen-Rcr,

Take a look at previous posts in this thread. You have the classic symptoms of leaked electrolyte from several capacitors. If you believe this repair is above your level then you can seek out other members - @zensation may be able to help. You may want to send a PM to him. Otherwise, these components can be replaced with some basic soldering skills. I see you desoldered the speedo motor so that's a good start. What does the back side of the board look like?

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...a28805a1d1.jpg

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...b904ca457b.jpg[/QUOTE]

Thanks Gen.......I can help if you want it repaired quickly.

Thank you for your help with this. I went back through this thread and read a through a few recent pages. It looks like there are a lot of people on this forum that are pretty bright. I feel a lot less intelligent after reading it now.

I'm ok with basic repairs and de-soldering and re-soldering some of the bigger stuff, ie the speedo motor. But after seeing all the capacitor juice all over the board I feel like most or all of these components should be replaced. I ordered a bunch of capacitors that came in yesterday but none of them look like the ones on my board. I got the list of capacitors to order for this project online somewhere but not this form.

The back of the board (green side) doesn't look bad at all. Just the usual dirty solder points that I cleaned up with some alcohol but nothing like the business side of the board. Unfortunately, I got frustrated with it yesterday and just put it all back together to ship somewhere before getting any more photos.

Another issue I have with this is I have such a lousy memory that I can never remember how to put things back together correctly. I think I may have put some screws back incorrectly and I ended up with 2 left over that I couldn't figure out where they went.

At this point I don't want to risk screwing up the cluster any more than it currently is. I would rather get out the checkbook.

Thanks Gen.......I can help if you want it repaired quickly.[/QUOTE]

Yes please!
Here is my contact info.
Joshua Abel
ABELexpress LLC@yahoo.com
412-526-0585
I can get it packed up today and shipped out tomorrow.
thanks a bunch.

let me first say thank you for all this great information, while I haven't read everything yet. It has helped immensely.

So my cluster worked fine from my JDM 92 FD, apart from the odometer readout.

Upon pulling and desoldering I can see leakage from capacitors and several parts look to be burnt out.
C1, C2, C3, C9
Z02,Z03, Z04,Z07
Tr2,Tr7,Tr8
Da2

Just wanted to know the best course of action, would I be able to remove the replace all the capacitors assuming the zener diodes and other parts are still working?

Trying to resurrect a dead speedo.This instrument cluster had a dead speedo and tach .Speedo odo did not light up and speedo needle did not move. The tach does work with a different speedo.

I did replace most all the caps except C15 with the part no.s in the thread on speedo parts. DA2 had a leg broken which I sourced from the one listed in that thread ( an ebay link )as that was the only source for that part. I looked for damaged traces but only found the common one that C3 takes out and repaired that trace as in the picture.

This exercise yielded a speedo that lites up the odo and the odo increments km's but the speedo needle doesn't move.

Looking for direction on what to look at next. When I did desolder the needle motor I did carefully try to remove the motor ,but I guess one leg was still partialy stuck and resulted in pulling on the associated pin. When i noticed it was pulling the pin out I stopped and desoldered it and pushed the pin back up.lt looks like it wasn't a fixed pin but I'm not sure as i was carefull when trying to lift the motor off the circuit board.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...a7489c3be6.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx7...d3f9167cd4.jpg

just seeing this. if you still need help i offer a rebuild service. pm me if ya like.

Spy shots of a digital stepper motor tachometer replacement ive been developing. Sweeps great here's a link to a video of the function in the cluster https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/788159605

https://i.ibb.co/VN8C5hs/20230110-104141.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/yR87t1g/20230110-220747.jpg

That is pretty cool. It could help solve the dreaded tach failure issue. How do you convert analog input to digital stepper motor?

it probably fixes more issues than you think. Since 2015 I've repaired about 800 or so fd gauge clusters for people and the only inoperable issue that cant be repaired is a destroyed gauge motor. Luckily I probably have the largest supply of spare parts for these clusters at least in the USA so I can replace if needed but when those parts run out there's not a solution. I got a quote from an analog air core motor manufacturer to make a direct replacement motor if I reverse engineered it and they wanted a $500k order so obviously that ain't happening. Then I had the idea of replacing the motor with modern gauge steppers like most gm models use since I knew they were cheap and easily sourced. All that was left was for me to re design the tach board to take the incoming signal and convert it to digital steps. So it's a new circuit board I designed.

Also on top of fixing the obvious issues with the oem tach, it also fixes stuff that Flys under the radar. For instance when I was doing some calibration a while back for new gauge faces I realized how absolutely horrible the consistency was between tach assemblies. The images below explain what I mean. I have several tachs I use for testing and what I did was make a calibration template that I can use to determine how precise a tach is. I drive the tach up in increments of 33hz on a function generator on my test bench. Then I can mark the needle location and measure the angular gap between increments. In a perfect world each 33hz increment should retain an identical angular gap from the last mark. This denotes an accurate measurement on a gauge face. I.e. if every 1000 rpm increment on a gauge face is say 30° apart and say 33hz represents 30° of travel then every 33hz increment should correspond to 30° spacing. However in the pictures below you can see the spacing varies from 19° to 36°....this will never read accurately despite being otherwise fully functional in the vehicle otherwise. This digital version is fully calibrateable and opens up a world of opportunity especially for people that want say an 11000 rpm tach.

https://i.ibb.co/FbbJh5h/20230105-233922.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/cgF33pY/20230105-234350.jpg

Super nice work. Thanks for sharing the details.

Thank you. You can check out pics of some of my other work here www.rxclusterworx.com

Anybody got the voltages for pins X1, X2, Y1, Y2 on the stepper motor when the speedo board is powered on? (Not while counting just powered on). I'm getting 5.5v on X1 and 10V on the other three.
Problem is when I apply more than 137Hz (marks about 60MPH at this frequency) the needle goes back to "0". I just want to find out if my signal generator is bad or if there is something wrong with the driver or the motor itself.
I have repaired traces and replaced almost every part there is to replace on top of board except the 4 chips and diodes and resistors that measured "good".