Digital Clock Repair

[jamescarruthers]

Does anyone have experience with repairing the digital clock?

Mine only displays the time if I hold the left button down. Otherwise, it is illuminated but no display. It used to work.

I re-flowed all its internal solder joints but night but with no luck.

There could be a problem with the car's wiring of course. Recently had two very tricky inside dash ones (snapped wire at pin on Info Centre; pushed back connector in plug stopping VEM & fan switch illumination). Jeff had to lead me in the right direction but they were very satisfying fixes!

Remember the car's that are meant to have the digital clock have four pins on the plug, not three like you analogue peasants.

[jifflemon]

Remember the car's that are meant to have the digital clock have four pins on the plug, not three like you analogue peasants.

On the plus side, us analogue peasants can easily tell the time......

One of the things I was looking at with Mr Dendy, was actually replacing all the gubbins inside the clock with new ones, as you can gain additional features via CCC (cheap Chinese crap) such as temperature, voltage etc. However, like so many of my ideas, its very much in its gestation period, as there's many, many other more important things I should be getting on with

[jamescarruthers]

Remember the car's that are meant to have the digital clock have four pins on the plug, not three like you analogue peasants.

On the plus side, us analogue peasants can easily tell the time......

One of the things I was looking at with Mr Dendy, was actually replacing all the gubbins inside the clock with new ones, as you can gain additional features via CCC (cheap Chinese crap) such as temperature, voltage etc. However, like so many of my ideas, its very much in its gestation period, as there's many, many other more important things I should be getting on with

True, and actually I am in debt to the analogue peasant who has lent me he his analogue clock!

[MisterH]

I have the opposite issue: the clock works but the light is out, so only in daytime

[WRDendy]

Bit late to this and I don't have one here to take apart to check, but does the screen use a zebra connector, which looks something like this picture from the internet:


(labelled here as 'inter-connector', enjoy the rest of the Chinglish as well)

Just a thought as pressing the button might exert enough force on it to make proper contact if it has shifted a bit or otherwise deteriorated. Equally might be talking absolute rubbish if that's not how the screen is connected. Will have a look next time I'm at the parts dept!

[jifflemon]

^^^ What this man said ^^



I suspect a liberal dose of contact cleaner, followed by some careful reassembly (case down, build INTO the case), as the zebra connector is free floating, so easy to misalign.

[WRDendy]

Also highly recommend a fibreglass pencil for cleaning the pads

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Proops-Brass-F ... B00IUGYADE

[jamescarruthers]

Also highly recommend a fibreglass pencil for cleaning the pads

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Proops-Brass-F ... B00IUGYADE

Do you mean clean just the button pads?

By the way, nice idea for a fix. Hope it works and I can repair my original. Will retire on the funds from selling the spare.

[WRDendy]

Any pads (should have mentioned copper pad rather than button) where a connection is made, in this case particularly the zebra strip but might as well clean up the buttons too:



Very useful things in general for cleaning up PCBs. Would also be worth drenching the silicone pads under the buttons and the zebra strip itself in contact cleaner and giving them a wipe down, same goes for the LCD glass.

[jamescarruthers]

Great, thanks, might give this a go some time.