Instrument Clusters '90-93

[Guest jsrtheta]

Practically anyone who's owned a '90 - '93 Riv has suffered the dreaded instrument cluster blackout, losing, either interrmittently or permanently, the speedometer, tach, temp, oil pressure, etc. readouts. Skimming the May'June 2009 Riview "Q&A" section recently, I saw that the recommended cure was to hunt down these clusters on eBay or at junk yards. I recently met two former retired scientists from Bell Labs, one of whom owned a '92 himself. My cluster was failing at the time, ans they offered to look at it.

These guys took my cluster and examined the boards, chips, ICs, etc. under a powerful microscope, cleaning up soldering and connection and testing for dead caps, resistors, etc. I now have a perfectly operating cluster, I am not sweating how long a junkyard cluster I bought will last, and I've avoided reducing the remaining cluster population by one.

These guys have expressed interest in checking out other clusters. Feel free to write me at jsrtheta@colorado.net if curious.