Has anyone had anything like this happen and know of a fix? I've searched the forums and not found anything the same. Nothing comes up on the diagnostics and the car works okay. 

Just now, KWR01 said:

Has anyone had anything like this happen and know of a fix? I've searched the forums and not found anything the same. Nothing comes up on the diagnostics and the car works okay. 

 

If your instrument cluster is demonstrating electrical gremlins, could well be a very common fault. You age of Focus use 'lead free' solder to save some dolphins. It worked fine for a few years, but over time, it becomes electrically inactive, causing a multitude of faults. Load of threads about it, and a whole industry thriving on fixing it! Have a read at this...

 

Just to mention this fault is not likely to be due to problems with the solder joints on the main harness connector but more likely with the connectivity of the display panel itself. This is connected to the main circuit board via a short ribbon cable into a small in-line connector. However the main connector should be resoldered as a matter of course as a preventative measure whilst the cluster is apart.

It's also possible, of course, that the panel itself has developed a fault. It's driven directly from the microprocessor and is not coded to the unit so it can be substituted without problem.

I should also qualify this description by noting this image is for my 2010 Mk2.5 (facelifted) Focus but I'm assuming the earlier cluster will be similar.

It was a common problem in the late 1970's 🤣

That unit actually looks more like the ones that use a 6/7 pin type LCD connector rather than a ribbon cable.

I've repaired one that might be identical but did not capture a picture of the LCD, I did capture pics from a similar one with dual screens though, as below.

I agree that it will likely have the common solder joint issue, which may or may not relate to the LCD issue or have caused LCD failure, which I'd be happy to repair for you @KWR01 if you'd like me to, see my repair service links below.

However I agree with @mjt that this may well also require a new LCD. From what I understand of the LCDs they have a chip on them with a table of patterns for each character and they are commanded to display a certain character from the table at a certain location. Interference of these command signals from cracked solder joints may conceptually be responsible for the wrong characters being displayed, but I notice that it looks like certain pixels seem to be showing up blank in both pictures, which can surely only happen, at least so consistently, if there's a fault within the LCD itself. I'm just making an educated guess of course based upon limited knowledge.

Getting a replacement LCD can often be done, either new or scavenged from a used unit, but isn't generally cheap. It will probably cost something like £50 and it may not be easy to even find one.

Any day now I should have everything I need to be able to power on the instrument clusters I repair, so @KWR01 if you'd like to be my first Welsh customer, and the first customer who's IC I've actually powered on, I could repair the solder joints, then power it on (assuming my new setup actually works) to confirm whether or not a new LCD is required and then we could figure out what we can do about it.

The one like the OP's that I didn't get a picture of the screen for had possibly the worst cracks of all of those I've repaired: