Intermittent digital dash

[Lugnutz]

I have a strange problem. A couple of months ago my digital dash went black. The turbo lights still work but the digital displays quit. For two months they were dark. This morning when I started my car, it worked correctly for the duration of my 5 minute drive to work. When I started the car around noon it was dead again. Does anyone have any idea what is wrong? The only thing that was different today was that early this morning it was 12 degrees F. By noon it was in the mid 20's.

 

[GNVenom]

It's a bad power supply. Look in

www.installationinstructions.com/fyi/digitaldash.pdf

for more details.

-John Spina
www.casperselectronics.com
www.gnspyder.com
www.gnvenom.com


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[denn454]

i think something like that happend to mine before i got the car, the guy said it had a "dead dash" sent it to caspers, $200 later i've yet to have a problem AND it doesn't flash at 5 anymore, it has the 199mph chip. i REALLY want to see it flash 199 at me!

 

[Lugnutz]

Yeah, the upgrade would be nice but until that darn lotto ticket comes back a winner, I just want the dash to work!

 

[Drac0nic]

are you handy with a soldering iron? If so, pick around the board looking for bad solder joints, there should be some TO-220 transistors (see below, bottom image)

http://www.nationalelectronics.com/TO.html

Re-melting the joints would probably be the best course, as well as adding solder where necessary. I had an old Bearcat scanner do this to me, that's what I did and it works now. At the very least, it's minimal effort and expense if you've got electronics stuff or know someone who does. The switch mode power supplies thermal cycle a lot due to heat generated by transistors, and this aggrevates any imperfections in a PCB (I garuntee they have some if assembled by hand)