2002 S60 DIM Repair Hints & Replacement Bulbs

[coflynn]

There's been a bunch written on this, so only wanted to give some other useful advice. #1 will be lamp replacement, #2 is some hints on more in-depth repairs.

LAMP REPLACEMENT

The bulbs have some special base - you can find them online etc, but it was the weekend here so local dealer is closed. Anyway my bulbs looked like this:


If you wrap tape around the bulb:


You can then pull out just the bulb:


From what I could find these are around 2W bulbs. I replaced them with Sylvania 37 LL which Canadian Tire had in stock, and I assume anywhere sells. They are 1.3W so a safe replacement, but a little wider:


I was able to use a drill bit to open up the plastic holder a little. Even without doing that it would fit, although felt a little tight putting it into the DIM.

DIM REPAIR

See other threads & videos to remove the DIM. Once it's out:

1. Release plastic clips to remove front.
2. Looking on back, notice some of the screws don't go through to the PCB. Remove those screws which are in the plastic. You can then remove the back plastic piece.
3. On the PCB, the screws in the white silkscreen rectanges go through to dials on the front. Remove those screws
4. You can now gently pull up the dials - see my pictures below
5. And the PCB falls away

The dials use long springs on the PCB, which look like this:


Which fit into terminals on the dial:


Thus once you've removed the screws, you do just pull up. When replacing them, ensure the little springs are fitting into the correct location! Otherwise you'll bend them which is bad...

Anyway once you get the PCB apart it looks like:


To clean the blue stuff I used MG Flux Remove which I have on hand:


Step 1 of cleaning...


Continuing to clean...


I used some new flux to help the cleaning process when reflowing:


Then clean the new flux off. Anyway no after photos, I think my bad solder joint is elsewhere as still had crazy stuff coming up on the LCD That chip is the display driver (seehttp://www.datasheetarchive.com/dl/Datasheets- ... 630129.pdf) so I'm thinking the bad joint might be the flex cable to the LCD display itself...

[coflynn]

Alright, back at it today & success I think! Some notes for anyone else:

1. The LCD driver chip uses the serial mode, which has a serial clock + serial data. I think there must be a common bus for the various displays.
2. There is a /CS and a A0 signal as well which aren't shared (i.e. are specific to this LCD chip), so used for indexing

I ended up reflowing the pins on the main CPU connected to those lines (pins ~56,57,58 + pins ~94/95). You can see on the following image I've only cleared the blue stuff around from those two points. I also reflowed RA4 and RA5 which passes the signals. I've now reflowed all pins connecting the main CPU to the LCD driver chip. The following image shows the pin connections for reference:



Anyway hope this helps someone else with a similar issue! So far it's been reliable so will wait and see if anything else happens.

[coflynn]

In case my link goes down, here is that datasheet for the LCD driver as well as an attachment.

[marshallh]

So did the cpu reflow fix the missing lines problem? Was the solder leadfree?

[coflynn]

Ha this is easier than trying to talk on twitter

Anyway yeah I *think* it did. Holding out for a longer test, but when I had the PCB plugged in I couldn't cause the display to error out by flexing PCB or using freeze-spray. When I had only reflowed the driver chip it worked at first but flexing the PCB caused the LCD to go screwy again. I never took a photo of the bad LCD alas.

I think other threads on the DIM issue had people reflowing that CPU. I only resoldered those few pins that should have mattered to my problem. I used leaded solder anyway, the date code on this thing was like ~2000 so I assumed it wouldn't be RoHS then but didn't actually check (is there an easy way to tell?).

It looks like the serial bus is shared between the other displays, or at least the lines go off into another part (I didn't trace them out). So I suspect my bad joints were in the /CS or A0 lines, maybe causing invalid data to be loaded. As the other displays were all working fine, it was just the one that was going crazy.

As an interesting aside there's a big relay on the PCB, which seems to have no purpose but to give you the clicking sound when you put your turn signal on haha.

[oragex]

I'd like to add my experience. The '201' along other numbers resistors that are near the chips, do fail as well. When they are heated with a torch, they will start working again for a while, but they need replaced along with re-flowing the chips.

[coflynn]

Update here, as had another failure on my DIM where it was going totally dead. I had to reflow all the connections around CPU1. The process that worked for me was:

• Remove that blue crap using flux remover and/or 99% rubbing alcohol on a q-tip. Get it nice and clean.
• Put flux around the area (I used a flux pen, I had a rosin flux pen which MUST be cleaned after).
• Reflow chip. I used a physical soldering iron this time.
• Clean flux off well, using flux remover and/or 99% rubbing alcohol.

When putting back together I only put a few screws in. I'd had issues where I'd reflow connections, it would work, but then tightening all the screws down flexed the PCB and caused other failures. Anyway been a month now and all is OK again it seems...

[jenkinskg]

Thanks guys, mine is totally dark and no guages, will try cpu reflow
may just clean and try with iron first.

Was looking at heat guns, just would take a bit of time

[Blackstone]

I know it's an old thread, but for anybody who's interested. This is a DIY video of reworking the surface mount chips on the DIM.



Thanks.