Fixed my Tacho :)

[200SXNICK]

So, my tacho was doing that crazy thing where it sweeps around violently, often sticking all the way at the top for ages. I had read on here about fixing it by resoldering all the connections on the back of the board. I had noticed that when I push hard on the long button thing which controls the clock, the tacho would sometimes work for a brief moment, and concluded the board it was attached to was flexing.

Taking the cluster out was dead easy - I'm sure thats been covered a million times. Once it was out, I unclipped the front, undid the four screws behine the tacho, and slid the whole gauge out in one piece.

At this point I noticed the clock button thing isn't on the same board at all - and all the joints on the clock board looked fine - so I concluded the button is simply flexing the backplate, and the tacho board along with it.

On inspection, around half of the larger joints on the tacho board had cracks - from small to huge - so I resoldered all of them. I left the tiny joints for the chip (two long rows), as they looked ok and my soldering iron tip was pretty big!

I put the cluster back together and tested it in the car - no go. It was exactly the same as before. So I took it apart again, and looked really close at the two rows of tiny joints for the chip on the tacho board, and realised they were pretty much all cracked. Only tiny little cracks, but they were there.

At this point I got the dremel out and ground my soldering iron tip down to a fine point for accuracy on the tiny chip joints, then resoldered them all as well. When I did the resoldering, I added a little solder each time as I went along - some of them didn't have much solder on in the first place.

Tested the cluster again, and voila! All working fine Hope this helps someone with the same problem. Heres a pic of the back of the tacho board - see the smaller solder joints in two rows on the right hand side:





Edit: Its an S14a btw

[Tosseef Hussain]

Awesome. Top work with the dremel mate.

I call sticky.

[tet offensive]

top work, my car has the same problem i will give it a try during the week . cheers mate