2012 Ford Focus Faulty Cluster.

Quite a common issue with these Visteon clusters is that they cause a no start situation, randomly cutting out and/or erratic gauge readings.

2012 Ford Focus Faulty Cluster.

This is caused because at the factory, Visteon used poor quality solder on the PCB. 

Over the years, cold solder joints form all over the board, especially around the multi plug.

In a no start situation, usually banging on the cluster will get it to fire into life, but be ready for it to cut out again at any moment.

We remove all traces of old solder from the board and completely reflow using fresh, quality solder.

In this example, there was other faults with the cluster, so before doing anything, we took a full backup of the flash/eeprom.

Before sending the cluster back to the customer, we check the placement of the pointers by activating the needles on the bench, as these have to be removed to gain access to the PCB.

Not a bad job to do, although removing the needles is always a worrying time!