A friend of mine has a Volvo S60 with an instrument cluster that has been slowly dying to the point that now it almost never works (no speed, rpm, gas, dash lights etc). After researching it a bit I found it was almost certainly a voltage regulator but wasn’t sure how to replace it. Remembering some of the various threads where Luke had schooled people on this kind of thing I sent him a quick PM. Awesome dude, totally helped me figure out what chip I needed and agreed to help swap the part since circuit level soldering is a little over my head, especially on a part Volvo wants $1300 for. I got the part for $12 shipped from China and tonight tore the cluster out of the car, disassembled it and took the board over to Luke’s. He swapped the parts out, took a measly $20 and even agreed to do further diagnosis for no additional charge should this not fix it.
Back at my house my friend and I tossed the cluster back together and popped it back into the dash. TADA! Working cluster again. The LCD for the mileage wasn’t lighting up but that turned out to be just a loose connection.
CLIFFS: Luke_L is awesome. With his help fixed a $1300 Volvo cluster for $32.
EDIT: And as a bonus I got to touch the table where Drew’s harness for the LS1 RX-7 was built, and it still had all the labels for where the wires went to different components. I think my car gained 30HP just from this experience.
Not that I want to shrink my legendary ball size, but it’s $1300 for one that actually works. His was dead so I was basically taking apart one worth nothing with the possible reward of saving a $1300 part. The only scary part was removing the gauges to get to the circuit board. They slide onto little spring posts (something I didn’t know until they were off) and made a terrible sound as the plastic gauge was sliding off the metal spring posts.
Thanks for the kind words all. I’d be more than happy to help anyone on here with their stuff. I don’t charge anything to look at it if you bring the part to my place in West Seneca.
This is why I do this stuff…glad it worked out fo you guys…:tup:
No payback needed. It was worth a shot to look at it. But yeah, it was gone.
Thanks buddy. It’s amazing to think of how many “side” projects I have done for NYSpeed over the years. Drew’s car was by far the most fun. No really, I enjoyed it.
