engifineer

See the other thread of amoxaphobic. I replied in the end regarding this. I am not too sure the leads being shorted on the leds could have caused this, but taking it apart and putting it back together may have temporarilly "fixed" the motor if it is damaged like his was. If the problem comes back, let me know and we can work something out. I may get some spare motors if I can. I would blame it on the needle being pressed on so far when you first got it back. This can damage the motor itself causing these intermittent issues.

I will send you a pm on the rest soon as well.

engifineer

here is the other thread he posted

https://www.scionlife.com/forums/vie...076&highlight=

Amoxaphobic

Dave, I am in no way challenging your answer, (You have the masters, not me) but I was curious if you are sure that the LED is a different circuit than the motor? I don't have the gauges in front of me, but from what I can remember, it looked like maybe the motor was sharing the power source for one of it's coils. If his leads were touching, this could have surely created a temporary short... and if it was creating a short, then it's good that he caught it before it did real damage. This is the only thing that I could think of when he said that his problem only existed when the he turned the lights on.

Either way, it "appears" to be fixed for now, and hopefully he has no other problems. Orange, please keep us posted. Dave and I will always help if we can... though Dave will probably be more helpful than I can be. :D

engifineer

They may share the same power source (I would have to look at mine and see) but if the main source was shorted I would expect issues with all of the motors and leds. If it is shorted past the limiting resistor (like if the ends of one led were shorted together) you would still have the limiting resistor in line, since each branch of leds have thier own limiting resistor. So you would be drawing more current in that leg, but you should at least be limiting to a point that it isnt a direct short due to the resistor. Not as good for power supply life, but should not kill the rest of the circuits. This is why I would expect it to have to be a short across the main power circuit, which would cause multiple other issues.

I will keep thinking about it as well to see if we can come up with a good answer. Also, we can watch his to see if it is indeed fixed for good.

And by all means, challenge my answers, I am just speculating off of what I know as well, so I could be off my rocker as well :D

PaperLegacy

When I had my LEDs swapped all gauges worked except the tach. FIRST of all the Tach was just pressed in too far. No biggie, I pulled it out a bit and reset it.
I have a 2010 tC and the ONLY PROBLEM I had after that was for some reason... with the tach needle set on zero... any time I used unlock on my keyless entry, the needle would slowly go south to the point it was pointing straight down!! I tried all methods to resolve this issue and no success.

I'll post pictures later today but I had to install a post for the needle to not go past 0. I used a screw from the xbox x-clamp as the post. It's pretty clean and NOW have NO problems!!

LEDmod

This kind of work is better left to a professional..... ^__^

engifineer

You needle is not lined up. Not sure why the keyless entry is causing it.. but there is a physical stop in the motor that prevents it from turning too far to the left. If the needle is able to turn past zero, it was not zeroed to begin with. IT should be sitting against its internal stop when at the zero position.

I think a lot of people make the mistake of setting the needle position with the power plugged into the board. The problem with this is that if you have power applied, depending on the key position you cant tell as easily when the motor is at its zero stop since it applies power to both coils to hold in one position. The board should not be plugged in at all when you are setting the needles. I mention this because a few have mentioned to me that they do it this way. One common issue is thinking the needle is properly zeroed, only to have it drop below zero when the car is off.