Flicker Instrument Clock lights!

[kharris04]

G’day.

My father has bought to my attention an issue he had with his ‘09 Focus.

When he bought the car in January, everything was fine for a few weeks until eventually he noticed that driving in the dark, the Instrument Cluster lights would flicker on and off or wouldn’t come on at all. He took the cluster out and sprayed some contact cleaner in the connector and it seemed to fix the issue.

He then told me last week that the lights are flickering again and sometimes not coming on at all. When they don’t come on and you go over a speedbump, they flicker on then will stay on or return to not working state.

I then delved into all of the paperwork that came with the car and found a bill of sale, stating “customer states dashboard lights flicker on and off” with a comment saying “connection checked, no occurring problems”

I read somewhere when he got the car in a forum that the MK2 Focus suffers with condensation getting behind the dashboard and messes with the solder on the board of the cluster.

I told him I would spend the weekend looking at it because the car needs to be MOT’d next week and the problem needs to get sorted. So before i do anything, would anyone have any of the exact or similar experiences or any idea why this is happening?

The bulbs are fine, the connections and wires are tight and everything seems as it should but the problem remains a (for now) unsolved mystery

Edited by kharris04 on Friday 13th November 17:05

[paradigital]

The fact that movement can temporarily resolve the issue would suggest that a dry or corroded solder joint is likely the culprit.

I guess it could also be a break in the loom that’s intermittently connecting.

[Oldandslow]

Cracked solder joints was an issue on Focus instrument clusters. Was a bit like YLOD on Playstations. Ford barely acknowledged there was a problem and people home brewed solutions. I'd try a few Focus owner forums for solutions.

[kharris04]

paradigital said:

The fact that movement can temporarily resolve the issue would suggest that a dry or corroded solder joint is likely the culprit.

I guess it could also be a break in the loom that’s intermittently connecting.

Cheers for the reply.

Thanks for the pointer on that one. I am definitely going to take the cluster out tomorrow and see if I can see anything visually wrong. The wires on the connector look fine but I guess there could always be a problem further down in the loom. And like you said about the solder, I read about it in a forum before and how Ford knew it was a problem but didn’t do anything about it.

Cheers!

[kharris04]

Oldandslow said:

Cracked solder joints was an issue on Focus instrument clusters. Was a bit like YLOD on Playstations. Ford barely acknowledged there was a problem and people home brewed solutions. I'd try a few Focus owner forums for solutions.

Cheers for the reply.

Thanks for the pointer on that. I am definitely going to take the cluster out tomorrow and see if I can see anything visually wrong. Good ol’ Sony and techy problems mix well don’t they ay?

I did read in a forum about certain circumstances and people say that sometimes it could be the 7.5a fuse going out, the alternator overcurrenting the circuit and needing to splice into wires or re-soldering on the old points. We shall see if anything changes when I break it down tomorrow hopefully.

Cheers!