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Haha, Just wanted to thank the community again, and especially the OP (Greg). I had been having the Odo problem on my 99. I have gotten used to just tapping on the gauge cluster (kinda like in the old war movies when the guy is in the airplane and taps on the gas gauge to make sure it is reading right, hehe).
I actually took my cluster out and just cleaned the contacts on the ribbon connector with CRC cleaner, and thought I had it fixed. It worked fine for a few weeks, but then began to act up. I am going to pull 'er back out and refresh the solder connections now, and I imagine that will be the final cure.
Funny that I just did a similar operation on my kenwood stereo head unit in the truck. I was getting some popping sounds and thought I had a bad wire, but finally discovered some fractured joints on the mainboard inside the thing. I reflowed those and the thing has been fine.
So it is not just a Ford problem. I think someone in this thread hit it on the head when he said that the modern automatic soldering processes are tuned to flow a minimal amount of solder on the circuit boards. When you put that equipment into a shaky, bouncy 4x4, you will inevitably find the weakest, thinnest solder joints.
Thanks again guys!
hawk
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