PCB repair

The gauge cluster has a quaint little printed circuit board on the back. All four pins on mine were loose. Loose pins can cause all kinds of problems with your instruments. The pins are simply swaged on the back of board and it doesn't  take much connecting or disconnecting of the plug to loosen them. Some of the swaging was missing and when I attempted to re-swage others, the metal fell off. As you can see in the pic below there isn't much left.

Not much keeping these PCB pins secure

I lightly media blasted the connections on the board to remove corrosion. Very fine sandpaper would be safer but this way I was able to get into the nooks and crannies and clean the female terminals. A dab of flux applied with a toothpick at the base of each pin followed by some solder re-established a good electrical connection and firmed them up. Glue on the back side added strength.



Solder re-establishes a good electrical connection to the PCB foil traces

I finished assembling the very basic gauge cluster, tested continuity, made sure there were no shorts, and bench tested the fuel gauge. Good to go. I think there are more idiot lights than gauges in these things. Next up: Dash switches and heater control.


By the way, the mechanical voltage limiter on the back of these panels can be a source of gauge trouble too. Mine works but I may replace it. I've made my own solid state version in the past and there are companies that sell electronic versions as well. I ran across this a company called Real Time Engineering that makes one of the most sophisticated ones I've seen. Not cheap but might be worth checking out.