I was intending for this to be a HOW TO on how to repair your odometer/trip meter when it no longer illuminated, quickly my HOW TO turned into disaster. With perseverance, I prevailed and now have a odometer/tripometer that is illuminated!!! First I will go through the steps leading up to disaster and then recovery. (2002 4-Door Sunfire Automatic)
First off I removed the dash, unmounted the cluster and disassembled.
After getting to the circuit board of the cluster, I gently bent the digital odometer/tripometer downward and exposed a little light bulb that was clearly burned out. Perhaps because there is not much ventilation to the bulb which would cause it to become very hot... just a theory.
here is the circuit board from the cluster
slowly and carefully bend the digital odometer down... make squeeze the plastic legs that secure the digital odometer to the circuit board inward. Doing this will expose the burned out mini mini bulb.
My intent was to replace the bulb with an led that I purchased. I removed the bulb from the board, this way my replacement led would fit...
Here's the bulb
Once the bulb is removed, take the led and insert it into the hole that is in the back of the digital odometer display.
L.E.D. inserted to the back of the digital odometer display.
This is about the place where everything started going wrong, I would have been okay if I wasn't making a HOW TO, basically what I was doing was going through the motions and repeated several steps before adding it to my HOW TO, so what happened was I moved the digital display back and forth so many times that I loosened the solder joints making not have a good connection so only parts of the display were showing... I had to removed the display and went to Lowe's and purchased a soldering iron and some solder, it's a good thing I have some experience soldering!!!
The cluster with digital odometer removed. In this picture I've already replaced the bulb and not with the LED as I intended, instead, I removed an existing bulb and used that (I used an existing bulb because I do not use the original lights from the cluster because I have glow gauges and a LED setup) I eventually removed the rest of the bulbs too.
Then I continued by soldering the digital odometer display, I had to make 24 or 25 solder joints and it took some time to do. I tested and everything work!!!! WOO HOO
here is the final picture, it's not a very good picture I think that you'll be able to see the display working now...
I'll get a better picture later... as you can probably see, the picture quality changed as well... my luck wasn't very good last night, my digital camera's battery died so I took the rest of the pictures with my camera phone... is it a phone first or a camera first??? If it's a phone first, why aren't they called phone cameras?
Any questions?
You'd better believe I have questions!!
What size LED were you going to use? 5mm? 3mm? Other? What voltage is the LED? 3.5V? 12V? 5.5V? Other? What color LED were you going to use? Did you notice a change in the color of the digital readout when you finally changed the bulb, and do you think you could change the color using a nice, say... red LED?
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Interior FAQ -
J-Body of Michigan -
I purchased some overpriced L.E.D's from Circuit City, they were StreetGlow and cost $14.99... I'm not sure what size they are, it's not listed anywhere on the package, if I were to guess I would say they are 5mm, 12v (
here) and I was going to use white. I was able to mount the white led behind the digital odometer and it did not change the color what-so-ever. As a matter of fact, I would recommend going to your local electronic supply store and purchasing a replacement bulb for the cluster. The reason is because the led directed the light to a central point and did not illuminate the entire digital odometer read out. For example, if you have 5 digits, the middle two would be brighter than the outer digits. I don't think that you can changed the color of the display because I think that the color is a film either on the back or the front of the display...
Yeah, those are definitely 5mm, 12V.
The directional glow isn't a problem... chances are that those particular LEDs have a viewing angle of like 15°, anyway. In any case, it's easy to diffuse or divert the glow by sanding the LED or inverting the tip by drilling, respectively.
The film may or may not prove to be an issue. Both the gauge cluster & HVAC display's glows are due to a green film, and they glow red with my LEDs behind them. If it does become an issue, I'll see what I can do to remove it. If it can be
done on a cell phone, it can be done our odometer.
Thanks for the info. <br>
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Interior FAQ -
J-Body of Michigan -
No problem, again remember my goal was to just get that damn light glowing again!! HAHAHA... it worked.
I smack my dash and my odo light comes back to life, I hear the same from other people......
POS econoshitbox.
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well I smacked it up, flipped and rubbed it down and it did not work...
it did work for awhile, then it stopped altogether.... after removing the bulb, I could clearly see that it was out...
Quote:
well I smacked it up, flipped and rubbed it down and it did not work...
it did work for awhile, then it stopped altogether....
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Die Strasse gehoert mir allein. Ich habe genug Zeuern dafuer bezahlt.
they do make a led with a wide angle , they are inverted if i remember correctly
so they work more like a light bulb instead of a led
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just a suggestion for when your bending those pins holding the odo. Since they are solid pins you can take your sodering iron to them before you start bending to soften them. If you do not you seriously risk breaking the pins right off. If you heat them up before bending there will be no problems.
^^^ Great, now you tell me!! HAHA
OK, now I know this is a year old post. BUT do your needles still work right? ...And if so how did you put em back on?
So many posts on here about the needle removel problems on 2000+ cars. Maybe someone can shed some light on the subject.
Ok, looks like your needles were removed and then reinstalled? How is this done?? Anybody know out there?
I have basically the same question as above.
How did you get the circuit board back off??? On my 2000 Cavalier it's connected to the front by the needles. Did you remove the needles, and if so, how?
Thanks.
