April 2020 edit - after 18 months, everything is still working great!
Edit - Its been about 5 weeks of daily driving since i did this and all the buttons are still working great!
Hi All,
I have taken tons of valuable info from this site and now it is my turn to contribute something.
This write up covers the repair of the buttons shown below for the recirculation, A/C, defrost and rear controls:
On my cruiser, all of these buttons were getting to be really intermittent and over the past month it had gotten to where i could not reliably turn off the A/C or the rear controls.
I took apart the panel to see what the issue was - the blue button shown below is the heart of the issue, these are some kind of conductive silicone switch that over time will build up corrosion on the contacts and either not work at all or work very intermittently:
Switch guts, the small black dot on the right is conductive silicone and the two contacts shown on the left are the switch contacts; when the switch is depressed, the silicone is supposed to complete the circuit
Now, the repair procedure
continued on next post
Edit - Its been about 5 weeks of daily driving since i did this and all the buttons are still working great!
Hi All,
I have taken tons of valuable info from this site and now it is my turn to contribute something.
This write up covers the repair of the buttons shown below for the recirculation, A/C, defrost and rear controls:
On my cruiser, all of these buttons were getting to be really intermittent and over the past month it had gotten to where i could not reliably turn off the A/C or the rear controls.
I took apart the panel to see what the issue was - the blue button shown below is the heart of the issue, these are some kind of conductive silicone switch that over time will build up corrosion on the contacts and either not work at all or work very intermittently:
Switch guts, the small black dot on the right is conductive silicone and the two contacts shown on the left are the switch contacts; when the switch is depressed, the silicone is supposed to complete the circuit
Now, the repair procedure
- Disconnect the battery
- Remove the switch panel/radio surround by carefully prying it out of the dash. There are maybe 8 or so clips around the outside that have to release
- Unplug the 4 large multipin connectors from the back of the panel and take it to the bench
- Remove the knobs from the front by gently prying them up
- Remove the nuts and washers from the rotary switches with an 11mm socket (in the image above they have already been removed)
- Flip the assembly over and remove the screws that hold the black plastic panel on the back
- Once you have removed the visible screws, carefully pull the black plastic cover to the side and remove the other screws that hold the PCBs down
continued on next post
Last edited: