Hey everyone
Hope someone can help. I am in the process of purchasing a 90 TGP and it has the typical low fuel/check gauges light on. They are in the process in fixing it. I told them about the resoldering fix, but I cant seem to find the steps for the fix. I tried Wbody.com but cant seem to find it. Does anyone have the steps for this fix? I want my TGP already :)
all you do is touch a soldering gun to the terminals real quick to reset the solder and that usually fixes it.
Thank you - I gave them this information - hopefully they will get it fixed.
Here's a link to the old w-body article for now: http://www.w-body.com/oldsite/service/checkgauges.html
That link will be gone soon as all that stuff is now being moved over to the main page of the new forum @ w-body.com
Thank you for this info! I'll call them Monday with this information as well. Hopefully this will fix the problem and then I can finalize this deal. Will keep you posted...
I think the current owner for my TGP has the TORX bit and a soldering gun, but I tried reading the instructions, and I know I'm going to be lost somewhere in step 1 when I go for it tomorrow. I'll probably do this in an auto parts store parking lot so I can ask the guy in there which parts probably correspond with which step and also borrow their loaner tools from them. It would help if someone had pictures of the disassembly process, so does anyone have them?
Thanks for the help, guys. :thinking: Might as well post my woes and rants here so that others as inexperienced as me don't get themselves into an even worse situation(s).
I didn't have to unplug that god-forsaken HUD connector the entire time. I would've broken it if I hadn't figured out I could just rest the entire dash out of the way of the rest of the work without yanking that out and possibly having no real idea of how fast I would be going, since the speedo is optimistic by 10MPH.
Next problem was the electrical plug that fits into the circuit board, which I couldn't figure out how to get off, but my grandmother did somehow, with a phillips-head. (She's been working with computers as part of her career, so that's why she's involved) That step took about 2 hours of trying every direction of movement. There are several plastic pieces that "click" into place and attach through several axes, but once again, I don't know how to get it off since I wasn't there when she pried the plug out (Before getting the plug out, we tried re-soldering one of the 14 ends, when I announced that I was too nervous to keep working on it until we could get the entire board out of the car); in fact, I was at the auto parts store getting my pants wet because the guy at the desk kept reiterating that the procedure is incredibly risky for people who haven't soldered before. :icon_eek:
I'd also like to mention that there are 4, not 3, 7mm hex screws in step 1 substep 5 (the 4th is also on the bottom, directly behind the light switches, and behind those switches is a big wad of foam for god-knows-what, followed by the 4th 7mm); and 6, not 5, silver TORX screws in step 2. The two darker-colored TORX screws on the circuit board are irrelevant to step 2.
After almost giving up on the thing and just putting everything back together after the talk I had with the store guy, and because all the stores who had the special solder were closed, today being Sunday, grandma decided to just touch the solder gun without any solder to the 14 connections to see if that would work.
It did. Sort of. First time we turned it on, the low fuel light and the check gauges lights both were off. Turned it off and turned it on again, and the Check Gauges light stayed on, even though the low fuel light was no longer lighting up, except for a few moments after starting the car. There were no other lights, indicators, or awry gauges to "check." Re-assembly of the dash was no problem, other than losing the 4th hex screw I talked about earlier. :bonk:
No idea what to do about the light now on, of course, since the parts stores don't use OBD1 gizmos anymore, according to the same guy who almost talked me into giving up (And he did, in fact, but grandma wanted to give the soldering a shot since she at least knew exactly what she was doing) whom I met after this "experience" in the line at Wendy's. I'm just glad nothing is broken by now.
Mission accomplished, I guess. :willy_nilly:
http://unitedradio.com/automotive/
I believe these guys will rebuild and calibrate our gauge clusters for around $300. Maybe a little less. Just throwing out a resource, I am still deciding if I am sending mine off to them.