I started to change out all of the lights in the dash for leds. I started out by taking out the tach, amps, fuel, and the temperature gauges. After I got done, I put them all back in. They all work except for the fuel guage. Whenever I turn the key the needle moves all the way up to the top of the guage. Any ideas?

 

while a chore but not hard id say take it back out n make sure you didnt fold up anything while putting the cluster back in..n make sure its making contact correctly in the cluster plug. when i pulled mine out to replace it my temp didnt work..removed it n re-seated it everything worked..

 

I took it back out and found out the ribbon wire was snapped. Any idea on how to fix it?

 

ouch...

junk yard..

iv never tryed to repair one by hand as if u tryed to u could screw something else up or cause something to melt or all around stop working.

 

 

if that is a solid wire kinda thing, can try soldering it

 

Solder a small jumper wire to make connection then use small amount of hot glue to hold in place........piece of cake

 

^^^ This ^^^

A single strand of wire out of about a 18 gauge stranded wire is just about perfect.

 

I've done a similar repair but needed to sand the trace a bit to get the solder to stick. If you can tin the surface of the trace before soldering the wire patch -all the better.

That circular discoloration is odd, how does the rest of it look?

 

One quick bit of advise here ;

If you've never soldered before , this is NOT a job for a novice solderer !

Every bit of advise the guys here gave is 100% spot on , the repair is a small piece of wire soldered across the broken section . Yes indeed the area where the solder is expected to adhere must be gently scraped of the coating till bare copper is showing . Now here's the part , the copper is literally paper thin and backed only by the plastic that you see the rest of the ribbon conductor is made of , and this plastic will melt , shrink , curl and distort , and pretty much do it's best to thwart the attempted repair when the heat is applied to it . I have repaired these exact breaks and the key is really cleaned surfaces , and the shortest possible application of heat , just enough to properly flow the solder but not so much to curl the plastic . It's literally tenths of seconds between a working repair and a do over , the line between soldered and melted away being that fine .

 

I'm only 16 and have never solderer before but my dad has done it multiple times.

 

Cool , if your dad has soldered before , he should be able to repair this . Make sure to remind him , the piece of copper wire used as a jumper need not be very big , thickness wise , the bigger it is the more heat it'll take to flow the solder (with a greater risk of melting the plastic) . You should watch what he does , owning an old car makes soldering a good skill to learn .

 

Like others have mentioned, soldering on a gauge cluster printed circuit can be an exercise in futility.

While expensive (because of the silver content) you can use a 2-part conductive adhesive to connect the jumper wire to the trace on the printed circuit in lieu of soldering.

 

I'm a bit late to the party, but you could also try a window defroster repair kit. It comes with a small bottle of conductive paint used to repair broken rear window defroster grids. Just clean/scrape the ends of the trace and carefully paint a new trace. Just wanted to post this in case someone else comes along in the future looking to do the same kind of repair.

 

We ended up just soldering it back together. Thanks for all the info everybody.