Dudedah

Hey folks, I'm hoping you can help me and I APOLOGIZE in advance because I'm seeing this as a common issue but am hoping for some specific help. For Christmas I promised my niece to install my old Alpine H/U and hands free kit in her car a 2001 Civic EX. Got a harness from Scosche and soldered all the connections to the harness from the stereo...Wasn't sure what to do with the Orange/White and Solid Orange from the Scosche harness with just the one Solid Orange from the Radio harness so I...I...Soldered them ALL together...

Installed it for her today and turned the key on to check stuff before buttoning the dash back up and immediately smelled something funky. Longer story shorter...all fuses under dash and hood are fine, but no dash illumination, Hazard indicators on dash are on all the time, no blinkers. Everything else in terms of brake lights and dome lights are fine.

Please help me I've EFFED up my nieces car and need to make it right...

ezone

I'll guess:
You burned out some traces on the circuit board on the back of the gauge cluster. The dash light brightness controls are in that circuit board.

Disconnect the radio, cut BOTH of the illumination wires off your adapter harness and tape/isolate them.

Not sure if the blinkers will be part of this issue or not.

Dudedah

Ok, did that, Disconnected the radio cut the orange wires and now each are heat shrinked "closed". Blinkers are working, could have been key position related I guess

So now only issue is no Guage lights. Lights behind odometer and indicator around gear position work. When I turn the lights on both blinkers indicators in the cluster are on solid.

So am I looking at replacing the entire instrument cluster? Is the circuit board separate? Any estimate on approximate cost to fix?

THANK YOU!!

ezone

Are you good with delicate solder work? Pull out your gauge cluster and check it out. You should find at least one trace burned halfway across the board.

Someone posted pics once showing how they jumpered and bridged all the burned out traces on their circuit board....and it worked.
Found it:https://www.civicforums.com/forums/2...sh-lights.html
Pics are on post 18


EDIT: Your turn sig light issue doesn't sound familiar. When you turn your lights on, are the turn signals on the OUTside of the car lit up?

Dudedah

I pretty much suck at soldering...did a search and found a cluster on eBay in my metro area for $89. Where is the memory stored for the odometer setting? This one has about 100,000 more lies on it than my nieces car, is there no way to set it so the replacement cluster matches the car it is going into?

Thanks again ezone!

ezone

Odometer data is stored in the cluster.

If you wanted to change the odometer you would need to send the entire cluster to a speedo repair specialist. At work we use Palo Alto Speedo. http://www.paspeedo.com/

Dudedah

Gotcha, ok, thanks for all your help.

ezone

If you can't solder, there are many around that can.
Maybe you can take it to an electronics repair shop and have them try.

Dudedah

Yeah, I've got a guitar player friend that is always soldering vintage gear so he said he might be able to solder the board since it doesn't seem to be crazy small.

Dudedah

FIXED!!!

Thanks zone for providing that other thread. Took out the cluster and found EXACTLY what is pictured on thread #18. Then my buddy soldered in some jumpers per YOUR method, without the tidy adhesive and we buttoned it all back up and BINGO!!

I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to this thread because YOU saved me some aggravation and some SERIOUS Benjamin's!!

On a side note I could find NO ONE in my Metro area (St. Louis) that could reset or knew who could reset an odometer. Next step was going to be a salvage cluster but fortunately didn't have to.

AGAIN...cheers to you.

ezone

(I love this gif LOL)

Glad it worked for you!