This evening's entertainment.
I had hoped this would be a pretty quick strip down, clean and reassemble.
Strip down is pretty easy.
Definitely needed a clean!
Sadly my hopes this would be a really quick job didn't last long. Apparently at some point in the district past someone has tried to fix the dead speedometer...by unloading about half a can of WD40 into the instrument panel.
Everything is slimy and sticky. While unpleasant this isn't generally a huge issue as I just need to clean it. Here's the issue though...The oil has got in between the plastic window in front of the banks of warning lights and the plastic window in front of them.
In itself this is unpleasant to clean up...but the big issue is that it has eaten away the printing on the filter gels. This is what I found when I peeled them apart.
Quite how badly this has eaten away at things is clear when you hold them up to the light.
Realistically I'll need to either remake these or find replacements. I'll make sure to get a high resolution scan to allow me to make a replacement digitally and print out on transparency film. I don't have time for that right now, so this will be a project for somewhere down the road.
For now I've done a bit of patching with a marker.
Not great but better...at least the dash illumination won't shine through the left hand one like it used to like this.
The single biggest cleaning task I was worried about though was the bit of plastic which has that diagram of the car printed on it. The plastic is edge lit and provides a light pipe effect to make the diagram glow. If that came off I'd be stuffed really, I don't have the resources to remake that.
Thankfully this was the result of ten minutes of VERY careful cleaning with a microfibre cloth.
Jumping ahead a bit, here's how this area now looks when lit up.
Far less blotchy light coming through from behind and it's way brighter now as the plastic is clean. The bezel isn't fitted there so there's a lot of spill from the sides.
The warning panel on the right always looked blotchy before because the filter gel was actually stuck to the plastic lens.
That area now looks like this.
Quite a lot of warning lights that just aren't used on this car being in humble RE trim.
[] Brake pad wear indicator (no bulb fitted or evidence of it having ever had one).
[] Glow plugs... obviously, it's a petrol engine.
[] Clutch temperature warning for the semi-auto gearbox - it's a manual.
[] Exhaust temp - only applies to cat equipped cars.
[] Oil level warning - very sadly not fitted. That may get upgraded as it's a feature I think is really sensible to have.
In addition to these though, this one isn't even in the handbook.
I assume was there intended to show when the engine was cold (note that the BX never had a temperature gauge fitted), but never actually got used. Would be quite a nice thing to reinstate.
Equally there two red lights alongside the "Econoscope" (a two-light based vacuum meter basically) in the middle of the dash.
These aren't mentioned in the handbook either.
Over on the other side we're also missing the indicators for the doors being open...these would be LEDs in these four holes.
I'm quite surprised that they actually went to the extent of omitting the LEDs... I'm kinda curious to know if they were fitted if the indicators would work. Only in the front obviously...there aren't door switches on the rear doors...or bonnet, or boot...so those lights *definitely* won't work.
The pointer for the speedometer needs a good scrub up and coat of paint...it should be white, not lumpy and rust coloured.
I'm still having big issues with scratchy contacts basically everywhere on this panel, so we may end up going with a more wholesale LED retrofit as I can just solder them in.
The panel has obviously issues...there are a bunch of broken clips, the above moth eaten light gels, and several "interesting" prior repairs to the flex PCB. Oh, yeah and I need to fix this mess under the clock.
I'll need to find a pin out for so I can figure out what's meant to have voltage or ground on it to sort that. The clock itself does work...insofar that it turns on with the ignition and then keeps time. However it resets to 0:00 as soon as the ignition is turned off. It also doesn't dim when the headlights are turned on as I think it should.
The flex PCB on this is one of the most difficult to follow I've ever worked on, so really hoping I can find a proper schematic which shows the pin connections so I can just buzz them out with the meter rather than having to trace every one out... That's for tomorrow though. Oh, and trying to remember where the bottle of sewing machine oil is so I can put a tiny dab on the speedometer bearing to hopefully thin out the WD40 goop currently in there. Little smear of grease will go on the work drive for the trip/odometer too...which was one of the main reasons for pulling it to bits.
This has turned into a bit of a ramble, sorry!