Pixel fix, Tips and warnings

[acspecialists]

Well I finally jumped in with both feet and fixed my pixels. I have looked at the job in the past and skipped it. I did it myself not because I didn't want to pay to have it fixed but because I'm dumb enough to try anything. Full disclosure I have a spare set of gauges so if I screwed up I could throw them in and they would work but the tamper dot would be lit. There were several moments where I thought I was screwed.

There are plenty of write ups and videos so I'm not going to cover how to do it but what I did and discovered in the process. So for starters it is not a quick and easy job. It took me several hours and two attempts. I used wood wedges used for installing doors to get mine apart. You just cut them down to the size and thickness for holding all of the clips at once. When I drilled the holes I missed one and had to move the hole over a bit. Fair warning it made a mess and it took awhile to clean all of the plastic bits out of the gauge set. At one point I thought I had ruined the gauges. For cleaning the contacts I used my fingernail on the glass part with some rubbing alcohol and some Q-tips. On the circuit board I used a razor blade followed by the alcohol and q-tips. I cut small pieces of business cards to put under the rubber blocks to increase the pressure on the strip. As I stated earlier it took two tries to get the strip lined up. A bit of scotch tape is a must to hold the strip in place on the circuit board. The aliment must be spot on, you can see pretty clearly with the light just right when it is lined up. Getting the pixel display on and off is a little hairy. It can't be pulled straight off due to the fact that one of the gauge pots is in the way. You half to remove and install it at an angle and I even bent the pins a little bit. When I was installing it the second time I used a Q-tip with the end cut off to push the ribbon cable under the display as I tighten it up.

In hindsight I would just pay someone to fix the gauges. It is just too tedious and precise of a job for me. I spent less time upgrading to 750 brakes and replacing my wheel bearings. It is nice to see my mileage and to not have to mess with coding and milage reset by using another gauge set. Remember if you chose to just get another gauge set it will also lose pixels eventually. I would much rather have it fixed for another 10-15 years.
Attachment 631757

[purplecty]

Nice job! Kudos to you... I have a few clusters i wanted to play with but never dove in....

Well I finally jumped in with both feet and fixed my pixels. I have looked at the job in the past and skipped it. I did it myself not because I didn't want to pay to have it fixed but because I'm dumb enough to try anything. Full disclosure I have a spare set of gauges so if I screwed up I could throw them in and they would work but the tamper dot would be lit. There were several moments where I thought I was screwed.

There are plenty of write ups and videos so I'm not going to cover how to do it but what I did and discovered in the process. So for starters it is not a quick and easy job. It took me several hours and two attempts. I used wood wedges used for installing doors to get mine apart. You just cut them down to the size and thickness for holding all of the clips at once. When I drilled the holes I missed one and had to move the hole over a bit. Fair warning it made a mess and it took awhile to clean all of the plastic bits out of the gauge set. At one point I thought I had ruined the gauges. For cleaning the contacts I used my fingernail on the glass part with some rubbing alcohol and some Q-tips. On the circuit board I used a razor blade followed by the alcohol and q-tips. I cut small pieces of business cards to put under the rubber blocks to increase the pressure on the strip. As I stated earlier it took two tries to get the strip lined up. A bit of scotch tape is a must to hold the strip in place on the circuit board. The aliment must be spot on, you can see pretty clearly with the light just right when it is lined up. Getting the pixel display on and off is a little hairy. It can't be pulled straight off due to the fact that one of the gauge pots is in the way. You half to remove and install it at an angle and I even bent the pins a little bit. When I was installing it the second time I used a Q-tip with the end cut off to push the ribbon cable under the display as I tighten it up.

In hindsight I would just pay someone to fix the gauges. It is just too tedious and precise of a job for me. I spent less time upgrading to 750 brakes and replacing my wheel bearings. It is nice to see my mileage and to not have to mess with coding and milage reset by using another gauge set. Remember if you chose to just get another gauge set it will also lose pixels eventually. I would much rather have it fixed for another 10-15 years.
Attachment 631757

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[jclausen]

We send our clusters to bavtek, they do a great job

[Sobek]

Nice work mate, glad it worked out first time for you

I've done this a couple of times now for friends, and I would gladly do it again - so long as they understand that there is always a risk it won't work, or could make it worse. But really I found the job to be quite straight forward. I have a background of playing with electronics though, was ripping apart TV's when I was old enough to hold a screwdriver (yep, naughty haha) so to me this was a fun little thing to do. Was going to post the pictures I took along the way but they're buried on a spare hard drive and no longer on my imgur account, ahh well.

[hmmurdock]

There are plenty of write ups and videos so I'm not going to cover how to do it but what I did and discovered in the process. So for starters it is not a quick and easy job. It took me several hours and two attempts. I used wood wedges used for installing doors to get mine apart. Attachment 631757

So it sounds like I need to cut some wedges before I dive in head first. Can you give me a ball park on how long you actually spent on it? All of the videos I've seen make it seem like a quick job, but I'm not that naive. I'm guessing 2-4 hour ball park?

[acspecialists]

You are correct, 2-4 hours. Take your time so you only do it once.