On my 2007 F150 for no reason out of the blue only the instrument cluster lost all of its backlighting. The radio, HVAC, and headlight knob, as well as all the window switches still illuminated. Knowing that every crown vic, and every f150 I owned prior that has the Visteon brand cluster, all needed to be resoldered due to surface mount components and header pins developing cold solder joints. I thought it would be no different here. I reflowed all the problem areas, main control IC chip, header pins, and put it all back together only to find out the problem was not solved.
Watching pine hollow auto diagnostics I learned that you can test female molex connections by performing a "drag test" and you can physically figure out of there is a pin fitment issue.
The main harness / molex that feeds all the power and illumination voltage to cluster was located on the left side, and sure enough there were two pins that a sewing pin just fell into and out of with zero friction. All the others had nice drag to it.
I would love to know why this happens? There was zero corrosion.
Watching pine hollow auto diagnostics I learned that you can test female molex connections by performing a "drag test" and you can physically figure out of there is a pin fitment issue.
The main harness / molex that feeds all the power and illumination voltage to cluster was located on the left side, and sure enough there were two pins that a sewing pin just fell into and out of with zero friction. All the others had nice drag to it.
I would love to know why this happens? There was zero corrosion.
