grillage

This is a post to help others not be as dumb as I am.

Yesterday while driving home from work (in daylight), I noticed that my clock had stopped working.
when I bought the car last summer one of the first things I did was to replace the broken clock display. If anyone out there has done this before you know that it involves removing the face of the tachometer and the needle too. Then the clock comes out and can be pretty easily replaced.

I decided that my replacement clock must have gone bad and took the instrument gauge out of the dash, disassembled it and took out the clock. I tested it using a 12v ryobi lithium battery and some thin gauge wires (I first figured out I could do this when I was troubleshooting my window regulators - it works really well) and it was working properly. I then decided that the problem must be somewhere other than the cluster and went outside to reinstall it. It was now dark out and I noticed that all of the interior lights were out.

Flashback to the very first thing I did to my car. I bought it in the daytime and the first night I went to drive it I noticed that all of the lights were out. It turned out that fuse #4 was blown thanks to a short in the cigarette lighter assembly. Remembering that, I opened my ashtray to see a nickel sitting in the cigarette lighter socket.

Remove nickel, change out fuse and all is fixed.

CRAZY_RUSSIAN

lol, nice:-) you should of seen my face when my trunk wiring harness took out my instrument cluster, turned on all the interior lights and locked my doors. fixed the harness, and the cluster still didn't work... ended up being the same fuse :-)

superfan99

Just out of curiosity, where did you get your replacement clock?

Harzley

I'm curious too. Any how tos for the replacement around?

grillage

I bought a whole cluster off of someone. I can't remember if it was from here or eBay but I didn't spend too much on it.
I ended up using a bunch of the parts off of it.

As for the how-to, it's really pretty easy.

I'll try to do a writeup with pics in the next couple days. I need to take my cluster apart again anyway because I put the tach needle on about 200 rpms lower than it should be.

grillage

Hre is my best shot at a clock replacement...

First take out the cluster.
To do so with the steering wheel still attached, remove the two screws on the steering column

Then remove the two screws that become visible above the steering column...

Then pull the cluster straight out.


On the right side of the cluster remove the blue plug first...

Then you'll be able to pull it out a little farther. And disconnect the yellow plug.


On the oth side, remove the yellow connector and the white one behind it.

You might still have another wire to disconnect. On my 93 90q the airbag light is powered by a wire but the 95 cluster I bought for replacement parts had a bulb there like the other bulbs.


Now that the cluster is out and disconnected, you need to remove all of the screws in the back...

You'll need a torx 10, a Phillips head and a 6 mm socket.

Now separate the two parts...



To get to the clock, you need to take the tachometer face off as well as the needle. This is the scary part.
I used a fork so that I could apply pressure evenly to both sides of the needle. (edit - I have since realized that if you apply gentle force up and rotate CCW it comes out much easier than the fork trick)


When it is safely off take the two black screws out and you can pull the face right off. Then take off the clear plastic piece in front of the clock.



There are two screws that hold the clock in. They should be visible now and you can pull the clock straight out.

This is what my old clock looked like and what my replacement looks like. They are slightly different but both work in the cluster.



I used my ryobi 12v battery to test them...



Thats all. To reinstall just do this all backwards. Do take note of where your needle points when you take it apart. I didn't
which is why I just had to take it apart again.

To test your tach, if you have the auto climate control you can pull up channel 28 and see the rpm.
This is how far off I was before...

superfan99

I like the fork idea for pulling the needle. IIRC, swapping the clocks on the b3/cq doesn't require pulling the face from the tach.

Luxus Panzer

what model head unit is that...I likey

grillage

Kenwood KDC-x994

It's pretty awesome. I wanted something that could play music from my ipod or iphone without having wires everywhere. The usb connection from this unit is in the rear and I ran an ipod connector under the gear shift and into the console.

Also, it has bluetooth capabilities. You can pair your phone with it and use it as a speakerphone when you want to. It comes with a microphone that I ran up to the sunroof switch.

I love that my phone can be in my pocket ringing and my stereo shows me who's calling. I can answer without even getting the phone out of my pocket.

I think it's a couple models old - the newer model is on crutchfield for like $300. They have refurbs of this model on ebay...

http://cgi.ebay.com/KENWOOD-KDC-X994...item4cf5f8b863