I'd finally had enough of having to use telepathy to find out if I had enough fuel to reach a destination so decided it was time I got down to making good the poor solder joints on the rectifier located on the instrument cluster's PCB.

It's a pretty easy job and should take less than an hour easy.

You'll need:

24mm socket
Flat blade screwdrivers
Phillips screwdrivers
Soldering iron
Solder
De-soldering tool (solder sucker)/de-soldering braid
Small wire brush

The main problem I was having was that my fuel gauge would more often than not read empty, I would get the odd time when it would read as though I had fuel but I was never confident that what it was showing was a true reflection of what I had in the tank. My other problem was that my temp gauge had a mind of its own, it would sometimes charge up to the top and other times would hover between cold and a quarter of the way up. I'd read lots about the problem and despite the odd faulty PCB most posts seem to point at dry solder joints where the rectifier attached to the circuit board. It seems to me that over the years - my van is a 1995 model - the heat generated by the rectifier has caused the solder joints to degrade to a point where the connection was becomming intermittent.



Your aim is to obviously get the entire instrument unit out and onto a table or bench to make good the poor solder joints. This is made a lot easier by removing the steering wheel, steering column covers (top and bottom) and also the steering column switch assembly (indicator/wiper stalks etc.). With these removed you have a lot more room to work with and it only takes a few minutes to remove them all.

So first off, get yourself a 24mm socket and remove the nut holding the wheel onto the spline. It's worth indexing the wheel and the shaft with a felt marker before removing the wheel so it goes back on in the right place when everything goes back together.



Once the nut is off, undo the three screws on the steering column covers and remove the bottom part, the top part does come off but it's easier to take out if you undo the three screws on the steering column switch assembly - the screws are security bits but a flat bladed driver will remove them.







With these three screws removed you just need to disconnect the wiring loom connectors that plug into the assembly and then pull off the stalks. The two stalks come off seperately and can be put to one side.



Now that you have both stalks removed from the steering column you can get easy access to the two screws at the top of the plastic trim - one on either side.



Having removed the two screws the plastic trim can be prised out with a flat bladed driver on the front edges and then pulled out of the way.





So with the plastic trim out of the way you can now see the goal. The instrument panel has two screws (one top left and the other top right) which need to be removed before pulling the panel out. Be careful they don't fall down into the dash as there are lots of things they can get caught up in.





I suggest before pulling on the instrument panel it's worth getting under the bonnet to disconnect the speedo cable as it makes the whole unit a lot more manouverable and allows easier access to reach round to disconnect the cable from the speedo head.





Pull the cluster towards you and because you have disconnected the speedo cable you will find it easy to disconnect the harness from the back. Once this connector is off you then have the whole unit to work on easily at a table or a bench.

Right you should now have the unit sitting in front of you.



The first thing you need to do is to undo the two screws either side of the unit which will allow you to remove the front cover.



Now that the cover is off you can remove the three bulbs that illuminate the dials. These are a simple quarter turn but be careful as the plastic can be brittle and they can be easily damaged. Your next step is to remove the dials, the clock and the temp/fuel gauge units are just released by gently pulling upwards. The speedo unit has four screws that need removing and then is easily pulled up out of the way.









With the dials all removed you can see the problem (or you should do if yours is a rectifier problem) in the top right hand corner you will see the rectifier and you should also see the dull solder joints.



Working on the PCB will be much easier with the circuit board removed. This is very easy as it's only held in with a few clips, your only awkward bit is releasing the socket on the back but if you look carefully you'll see a couple of tabs which will pop the board out.



Now that you have the PCB out remove the rectifier from its connector and from the heat sink - electronic components get a bit twitchy when too much direct heat is applied to them - and then remove the old solder with either a de-soldering tool (solder sucker) or braid. Once the old solder is removed, give the area a bit of a clean with the wire brush - don't use a stiff brush for this, something like a copper brush will do - or some isopropanol if you have some just to make the area better for the new solder. Taking care, solder the joints aiming for a nice bright joint and once done put the rectifier back ino its connector and you're pretty much done on the repair.

Obviously, you now need to reverse the steps to get it back connected in the van. All being well you should end up with a working fuel gauge and temp gauge.