today i took the cluster out of my car and i ripped the electrical paper cover on the back , i noticed that two of the gold lines running thorough the green backing were ripped. so i decided to solder them back to each other, so i soldered them together but there so close to each other i just put one bead of solder and it connected both lines to each other with one bead of solder....i went to plug the cluster in and everything worked fine, then i turned on the lights (didn't light up) and noticed a little smoke from the large plug on the left in the pic below...so this means that the wires i soldered together shouldn't have been connected to each other...so i have a short right....i went to a local car electric store and they said like 300 bucks to find and fix the short...is there anything i can do to keep from having to pay this, could i just get a whole harness for a cluster from the junkyard...i mean where could the short be? and how could i find it?

so i just put the cluster in after i swapped out a whole new green backing on the back, and now everything works fine but the lights

sorry for the long post.....please help me fix this!

 

i really need to fix this

 

anyone?

 

up

 

were the wires the same color? Did you acutally match the correct wires? If not fix it yourself and solder the wires back. If its just one wire I dont see why you need to send it somewhere to fix a short. You already know where the problem lies.

 

there were 2 different wires that came dissconnected...(2 sets...4 wires total)

so i just put one big glob of solder over all 4 thinking asa long as there current running through one they will all be the same....but i was wrong

 

omg.... you probably fried something but desolder that glob and wire them up individually and dont solder it yet. Test them first wiring them individually with the corresponding colors and see if it works. If it does you didnt fry anything and you can solder them one by one. If it doesnt work you know you messed something up and may need to replace something. It should end up working though. Try it out then let me know.

 

i replaced my dimmer switch........everything works great now, thanks a lot