After several years of dealing with either my turn signal indicators not working, or my gas gauge not working, or my high beam indicator not working (depending on which way I wiggled the harness behind the dash) in my 1967 Cutlass Supreme, I decided to repair the loose or missing pins on the printed circuit board.

During those frustrating years, I'd sourced a few spare PC boards from ebay, so I finally pulled mine out to see what I could do.

Choice #1: install the "repaired" circuit board I'd purchased on ebay. Electrically it was fine - 0 ohms of resistance from the head of each pin to every point on each circuit. I was worried that the solder blobs would end up breaking off of the copper due to vibration over time (as had happened to the solder fix I attempted back in 1997 or so). Here's a look at that board:
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Option 2: replace all of the pins with #3-48 screws and nuts. I actually felt that this was the most solid of the options, but I didn't like the dissimilar metal issue with stainless and copper. If I could have found brass screws, I might have been more inclined to go this way:

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Option 3: This is the one I went with. I salvaged a full set of decent pins from the three PC boards I had on hand, and threaded #2 screws in from the back side. These original pins sit on there quite solidly, and are in good contact with the copper surfaces on the board. This is the part that's now in my car, and for the first time in the 20 years I've owned it, everything in the dash works.

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That's very similar to what I did on my '68 4-4-2. Four of the pins in my gauge pod circuit board were just flopping around. I used small screws that I bought at a model store and they tightly secured the pins into the circuit board. I mentioned this in the last couple of paragraphs of an article I wrote for JWO about converting from idiot lights to gauges, which appeared in the April 2009 issue on page 9.

Randy C.

 

I was reassembling my car and was on the reinstalling my dash . Everything works and replaced all bulbs with LED lights. Except the gas gauge. But it worked before! I started from the gas tank, traced all the wires. Checking for ohms. (I knew I only had a little gas so it should read on the low side on the ohm meter, gas gauges go from approx 0 no gas to 90 ohms full tank) I got past the floor ribbon reading correctly, then under the dash. It got all the way to these pegs on this board. The gas gauge pin was loose. I pulled the board. All pins were tight against the board except the gas gauge pin. I must have knocked into it or something. I fixed it from this thread. I used a 1-72 size screw 3/8 long with a washer. I screwed it from the back, inside the loose pin.....like the third option in this thread. Made the pin super tight to the board. Left the other pins alone, they were plenty tight. Everything works!! Super thankful
Ian

 

That's fantastic! That's what this site is all about.