Digital Gear Indicator LED repair

[glankford]

In the interest of giving back to the community, I figured I'd share a recent repair I did on the gear indicator. The display had a few segments that were flaky, and that kind of stuff really bothers me. Jess had replacements available, so I felt confident that I could tear into this one and had nothing to lose.

After extracting it from the cluster, i was able to slide the black plastic part out of the metal mounting bracket. there was some epoxy residue holding it in place, but a little prying popped it out. It only comes out one way.



I found the intermittency by wiggling and twisting the two parts. The display part was the culprit.




After getting it apart, I started in on grinding down the gray epoxy that concealed the solder joints on the display.



Believe it or not, the "logic" for what segments are lit up is contained on this little board that is glued into the metal mounting bracket. I believe it is a series of printed diodes that turn on the different segmets of the display based on which wire is grounded.


The fix is seen in the above picture, where I soldered a wire between two of the common wires.

The repaired product:


I'm back in business. We'll see if it holds.

Thanks,
glankford

[goandy]

Nice work Garrick, but I'm a bit stoopid and can't see the repair you made- could you point it out please?

[glankford]

Sorry about that. It is the third picture down. I ground down the epoxy, revealing the different solder points on the display. I added a jumper wire from the diode (that's the pinkish reddish glass thing in the middle) to the upper right part of the picture. I got ahead of myself and forgot to take a picture before I soldered the jumper.

If I did it right, that picture should update with an arrow showing what I soldered on.

[goandy]

Thanks. I thought that was the case. Out with the dremel for me!