mom Banned

Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: Cupertino, CA Posts: 196

(continued) ...



Here you see the pins checked for alignment from the side.





Here you see the head-on view of the pretty little soldiers. They are not even close to perfect; but, as it turns out, plenty good enough.

Note: Don't use plumbing flux or solder for electrical soldering; use rosin core flux!





At this point, I suddenly realized if "corrosion" was the initial problem, then leaving (acid?) flux on the metal contacts was probably not a good idea. So I dug around the garage and pulled out a tube of electrical cleaner (CRC non-chlorinated California-safe MAF cleaner was all I had), a tube of compressed air, and a tube of di-electric grease about a decade old.





First the contact cleaner, then the compressed air, and lastly the di-electric grease went on. At this point, I realized the goop was all over and it was then that I realized I had no idea of this di-electric grease was a conductor or an insulator! (duh. I didn't think of that until now.)



So, I cleaned it up a bit with the MAF cleaner and compressed air, leaving only a thin (non-shorting?) film on the metal but not glommed up and oozing between the posts like a bad case of gingivitis of the gums.







At this point, you're almost home free. Remember, this step NOW is the one most people had problems with as their pins did not fit BACK into the back of the clock body. For me, it was anti-climactic, as the pins slid in like they were buttered (dunno if the di-electric grease helped there).





Repeat the steps of screwing the two tiny #0 Phillips head screws in, lining up the three adjusting knobs, and snapping the clock faceplate and back body into place.



Here's where I noticed I damaged one of the "ears" in the clock body, at some point, from all the assembly and disassembly.



Be careful with those ears. They are VERY fragile. Many people reported breaking one or more. Luckily, they are not electrically responsible; so, the clock will still work even if you have to tape the body back on now that the connections are securely clamped in solder!



Here you see the new repair has lasted a full minute!







The moment of truth ... the smoke test has lasted a full two minutes! (exactly twice as long as the previous 're-assemble fix').







Putting the center console back together was sans drama and was, as they say, the reverse of disassembly, so I think I'll close with the fact that the time was easily adjusted, and, well, two days later, it's still working!







Thank you everyone, and especially to CO_FlyFisher for explaining the critical fact that the PROBLEM is the silver springs make lousy contacts. The SOLUTION is to simply solder the four pins in place on the circuit board (probably only two of which are the problematic power and ground pins ... I wonder what the other two pins are for?).



Note to readers:

Please improve this digital-clock repair DIY by pointing out any errors or omissions so that others can follow easily in our footsteps. Also note that there exist folks on the web who will repair this for about $30. Considering the digital clock repair took me about three hours elapsed time, start to finish (but the picture taking cost me some time), sending your clock out for repair might be a better avenue than fixing it yourself - you won't experience first hand the "voila!" euphoria - but web-repair is yet another way to have a working Toyota 4Runner 3rd-generation digital clock in your center cluster! Thank you for reading this DIY, my first on this forum.

Don't use plumbing flux or solder for electrical soldering; use rosin core flux! Last edited by mom; 09-08-2011 at 01:47 PM .