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I'm in Denver. Every time it gets too hot inside the car, the speedometer starts flaking out. Sometimes even the tach too. This was happening during the hottest times of summer, and now, when I run the heat and it's turned partially down on my feet, it must be getting in there too, and causing it. It happened yesterday. The speedometer bounces, or in the case of yesterday, it went to 0. ( fortunately I have a GARMIN GPS and it has a speed indicator too ) Cooling the car off brought it back. ( sitting for awhile in cold weather )

So I'm a former electronics R&D tech, and even have NASA certified soldering experience and skills. I was thinking of removing the cluster and inspecting it for bad solder joints - possibly cracked ones, that I could fix up on my lab bench, with some soldering.

Found this video on removal, which doesn't look too bad:


Now, also, the odometer is dark at night, so I'm wondering if the bulb is burnt out. ( if it has a bulb covering that ) I'm also wondering if I could perhaps spiffy it up, by replacing all the bulbs with LED's. I noticed a few posts for that, but one said that you have to be careful to use 12V and not 5V ones. Something about someone burning out a board with the wrong type. Smoke, and nasty.

So is there a list of bulbs that go into this cluster, so I can buy them in LED in advance? And do I need specific types, to directly replace the incandescent ones?

And should I even mess with spiffy colors, or just use fairly standard ones?

Suggestions?

Thanks guys!

 
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about bulbs (OE)
https://www.hondapartscheap.com/auto...ents-ns-1-scat

you can see most of the car's components in any of the online honda parts dealers, really...

you will need to input your car info, that page is for mine car.

 
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I tinkered with LEDs in my 2002's gauge cluster. Wasn't hard to take apart. I retrofitted the OEM incandescent sockets with SMD LEDs and wired in a 470ohm SMD resistor so those LEDs could handle 12VDC input. The problem you may run into is splotchy lighting, since the incandescent bulb illuminates a plastic plate that provides backlighting for the cluster. I went with an EL overlay to get the numbers and whatnot illuminated evenly and bright enough to see at night, and the way I positioned the SMD LEDs was butt up against the plastic plates, and they were just used to illuminate the needles (cleared using rubbing alcohol and painted the back of the needle white)

I used this guide to properly retrofit the OEM sockets, but I used brighter SMDs (I think 5050s. I'm not terribly sure of what size I used way back when) in lieu of the 3mm ones that website supplies in their kits.

You can, for sure, mess around with fancy colors. I did blue in mine and they actually turned out really good. I was worried about white needles on a white background (background color of the aftermarket EL over was white as opposed to OEM silver/grey), but it wasn't an issue seeing in the day or anything. One issue you will run into is the coating on the back of the gauge face itself. On coupes, there's a color coating to make the illumination red (sedans, if I remember correctly was blueish greenish white?), and you'd have to carefully remove that coating to get whatever color to come out.

One member here (gearbox) actually embedded a crap ton of LEDs in the plastic plates within the gauge cluster to get a more even lighting as opposed to the.. 5 or so bulbs the stock incandescents used to illuminate the gauge face. I think there was some experimentation with EL wire, as well. I'll try and find those threads for you

Also, the gauge cluster in the video you linked is the 03-05 LED-backlit version. 01-02 didn't get fancy pants LEDs.


Here's gearbox's DIY guide for gauge lighting
https://www.civicforums.com/forums/1...sh-lights.html

 
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Finding the cluster is the hard part for me. Sure mechanics can find stuff.

 
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Oh wow! Tons of work! Thanks anyway! I need the car on a daily basis and it cant be down for more than a few hours. And I cant risk something that could trash the cluster board.

 
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took me three swipes, actually... :P it was hidden in one of the options

 
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Should also note that the biggest PITA part of the LED color conversion I did was "recalibrating" the needles after disassembly.
Tach was easy because I had a secondary tach (via a VAFC-II) so I just matched that up.
Fuel gauge, I reinstalled the needle after the car was on, first noting which tick mark the fuel gauge was on before I took it all apart.
Temperature, I let the car get to NOT and simply positioned the needle just less than halfway. It's not used for actual temperature anyways, so doing so was just fine for quick reference, at least for me.
Speedometer was the harder one. My method involved installing the needle while the car was moving. Basically found the slowest speed at which the cruise control would activate, then installed the needle pointing at 25mph.
You also have to make sure you don't push them down too hard, otherwise there'll be too much friction between the needle and gauge face and they won't operate smoothly (if at all)

back to your original problem of tach zeroing out in high temps.. Check the integrity of the wire that takes a reading from the ECU (blue on second to top plug, if I remember correctly). That could also cause the issue. I had that issue, but it was self-inflicted from a semi botched piggypack unit (GReddy eManage) install.

 
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Just something to consider, you can probably get a used cluster on eBay really cheap and stick it in your dash while you do the diagnostics on the original. My last ride wasn't a Honda but I got a used cluster for under $35 shipped and I actually ended up taking the Odometer out of the original cluster and installing it in the used cluster instead because it was nicer. I also replaced all of the incandescent bulbs with super bright blue LED's and all of the idiot lights for around $36 in that cluster. I would note that if I had to do it again I would use white LED's for the idiot lights because the blue behind the red and amber films made for weird pinks and green MIL's. The LED bulbs came with the T-5 and whatever the other socket was for the gauge bulbs and they were a direct swap and go for me. I did have to reverse the bulbs in a couple of sockets because I had the polarity wrong...

At some point I'll swap the bulbs in my instrument cluster 02 Civic LX for some green super bright LEDs and do the MIL's in white. I might do red though... Still undecided on that color choice as of yet.

-Sponiebr