1971 Instrument printed circuit board repair | Ford Thunderbird forum club group 1955-2005 models

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1971 Instrument printed circuit board repair

  • Thread starter Thread starter bcool
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bcool

bcool

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Thunderbird Year
1971
Hello Tbirdians,
The gas, oil and temp gauge are not working in my '71 and I have replaced the regulator behind the instrument panel and it is doing its thing, pulsating the voltage as normal. However, the gauges are still not working, and I have had the panel out a few times testing and following the ribbons and decided that there is a break in the printed circuit.
Suggestions?
Could I solder a jumper wire to the printed circuit?
Thank you all for your help and knowledge.

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bcool said:
Hello Tbirdians,
The gas, oil and temp gauge are not working in my '71 and I have replaced the regulator behind the instrument panel and it is doing its thing, pulsating the voltage as normal. However, the gauges are still not working, and I have had the panel out a few times testing and following the ribbons and decided that there is a break in the printed circuit.
Suggestions?
Could I solder a jumper wire to the printed circuit?
Thank you all for your help and knowledge.
Click to expand...
You can use self-adhesive copper foil tape to bridge an break, such as:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1128
Careful soldering with a low-watt soldering iron (as mentioned above)
using a low-melting temperature solder helps too.
 
To me it seems like it would be hard to find a break. Can you see it? I think mine may be shorted because it keeps blowing instrument light fuse, but I can’t figure how to locate.
 
A break in the circuit sometimes can be seen using a magnifying glass
but is bested detected using a test light or ohmmeter.

To detect a short to ground, remove all the bulbs,
then use an ohmmeter to measure the resistance of each bulb socket printed circuit contact to ground.
With the instrument cluster disconnected, every hot side contact should read OL or very high resistance.
A short would be indicated by a low resistance connection to ground.
 
unibody62 said:
If a short is found in a socket, what would the fix be for that? Could it just be a bad socket, bend contacts?
Click to expand...
If a socket was not twisted around 90 degrees to the stop position, it might cause problems.
Inspect each socket to see if any of the contacts are bent around differently than the rest.

More likely, the short is somewhere along the wires that feed the instrument cluster or at the cluster connector.
 
Thanks for your reply. The reason I was leaning towards the panel is because the car is very clean. I’ve owned it for around 33 years and it only had about 24,000 mile when it became mine. The instr panel lighting has been on the fritz for maybe about 20 years. I keep think I’ll take it to an electric repair shop and have them tell me what it is, but I never get around to it and don’t drive it at night anyways. I’d like to fix it before I pass on to my son.
 
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