[*sean*]

Another reason to ensure you have a belly panel in place is because water splashed into the engine compartment when the pan is missing will reach the power steering torque sensor and can damage it temporarily or permanently. In my case, permanently. It appears that you cannot just grab a sensor from another power steering rack (unless you are very lucky) as it appears that the sensor is calibrated when attached to the rack. The sensor is two independent sensors that must report identical values or the power steering shuts off. I ended up replacing the whole rack when this happened.

 

[FadedBlue]

Another reason to ensure you have a belly panel in place is because water splashed into the engine compartment when the pan is missing will reach the power steering torque sensor and can damage it temporarily or permanently. In my case, permanently. It appears that you cannot just grab a sensor from another power steering rack (unless you are very lucky) as it appears that the sensor is calibrated when attached to the rack. The sensor is two independent sensors that must report identical values or the power steering shuts off. I ended up replacing the whole rack when this happened.

I guess I should add a new belly panel to my list of future projects then.

 

[FadedBlue]

Well I just fixed 2 things ... and broke something else at the same time.

New window switch and little switches so I can get the maintenance light to go out.

I got this de-soldering thing from Amazon. It seemed to work really well.

 

[FadedBlue]

Here is what just broke. The right half of the dashboard is no longer working or lit up. Do you think I need to replace a light bulb or something. Or maybe just try unplugging and replugging the connectors on the back of the back of the dash?

 

[FadedBlue]

Well at least the maintenance light is out and my driver side window switch works correctly now (with the old broken window switch if the driver side window went down all the way, it would want to stay down for several minutes before I could get it to go back up).

 

[FadedBlue]

I have heard that I should not have tried to take the dash off in cold weather to avoid cracking the plastic. Well it is 39F right now, but of course the garage is warmer than the outside temperature. I managed to break one little plastic tab putting the dash back on, but there was no visible damage.

Well, now that the dash is not lit on the right side, I will have the joy of taking it back off again later.

 

[*sean*]

Did you remove the big circuit board in the instrument cluster or unplug the connectors or disconnect the bulbs underneath? Inside the cluster I'm looking at, there are five wheat lamps in parallel that provide the backlight for the tachometer/temp, speedometer, fuel economy, and fuel/IMA gauges. If the connector inside that powers them were not seated properly, all would be out. Since only half are on, either half of them blew out, or the flexible PCB which provides the bulbs with power has a cut or tear in it that is preventing power from reaching the bulbs on the right. I cannot see how a tear would happen unless the cluster was disassembled more than it needed to be for this switch repair.

The only other thing I can think of is electrostatic discharge damage or a short in one of the switches or that a switch was assembled such that it is always pressed and raising the cluster brightness to its highest, with that being too much for the old wheat lamps and causing them to burn out. Can you use the switches to dim the instrument cluster lighting with the buttons?

I hope this is useful.

 

[FadedBlue]

I only unplugged and removed the 2 little boards with the switches. I did not unplug or remove anything else inside.

Hmm, maybe if I was sloppy with soldering, I could have accidentally caused a short from one of the switch leg holes to the center spot between the 2 switch leg holes? Well I guess I have to take it all apart to see if I did that. Not today though.

 

[FadedBlue]

I did not even know what the "+" and "-" buttons did. I just tried them. The increase and decrease the dash brightness. They seem to work for the left side of the dash. I was pushing the buttons on the right side too. They were changing the odometer display.

 

[FadedBlue]

Another thing that I did was just plugging in the 2 connectors on the back of the gauge cluster to test the replacement buttons to clear the maintenance light before assembling everything. Maybe I should have plugged in the other 6 connectors to the dashboard before trying to test the buttons? Maybe not having the other 6 connectors plugged in could have caused an electrical problem of some sort?

 

[FadedBlue]

The tiny switch solder joints look fine. And the switches test fine too.

Oops, I broke a plastic tab.

 

[FadedBlue]

I switched some light bulbs with the gray bases from left to right.

And now the right side of the dash is lighting up.

I also disconnecting the 12v battery for a couple of minutes.

Actually when I first started driving, the tach was not lighting up on the left side, but after I drove a while and saw that the IMA battery guage started working then I noticed that the tach on the left side was lighting up.

I am thinking I probably just need some new bulbs. Maybe I should just replace all of the bulbs with the gray bases? Or mabye I should just replace all the bulbs while I am at it?

 

[Bull Dog]

You don't need to replace all the bulbs. However, it's not a bad idea to replace all five of the light gray ones.

 

[1036Project]

Replacing all the bulbs with LED ones will save you .00000001 mpg. Obviously that's not worth the upgrade but you would pretty much never have to worry about them going out again.

 

[FadedBlue]

You don't need to replace all the bulbs. However, it's not a bad idea to replace all five of the light gray ones.

I just ordered the 5 light gray ones.

 

[FadedBlue]

Replacing all the bulbs with LED ones will save you .00000001 mpg. Obviously that's not worth the upgrade but you would pretty much never have to worry about them going out again.

Well it would be useful if you let me know where to get replacement LED bulb that you knew worked in my dashboard, but I will just stick with the stock bulbs because I know they work and seem to last for quite a long time.

 

[1036Project]

Well it would be useful if you let me know where to get replacement LED bulb that you knew worked in my dashboard

I purchased the cheapest ones I could find on Amazon . They work but they don't dim down as much.

I will just stick with the stock bulbs because I know they work and seem to last for quite a long time.

At this point incandescent bulbs will probably outlast the car so it doesn't matter much.

 

[FadedBlue]

Replaced the 5 bulbs with the gray bases.