For the record, I’m just posting about an easy repair that might benefit anyone with a faulty LED displays in the dash. Specifically this was for my Civic 2011 LX digital speedometer. It had the common Civic problem of LEDs that fritz out. The LEDs were getting so bad that sometimes I had no idea of my speed.
I had intended to simply replace the speedometer with a “new” second hand one ($80+). But in searching for remove/replace videos, I came across a really good video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZWRIVGcAfY (I have no relationship to the video poster). At about 9:30 in that video, the guy explains a way to try to fix such LED problems, either for speedometer, temp meter, or gas meter. I tried it, and it was easy and works great.
In fact, I have two observations to make the job in that video easier. (1) I used a very simple and fast method to reflow the solder joints for the LEDs. I did not add any new solder, simply pushed with point of soldering iron on each pin until the pin “gave” a bit in one direction (which means the solder liquified). Just takes a few seconds on each pin. I even used a bigger clunky soldering iron for that, with a clumsy old non-sharp point. (2) I think the isopropyl alchohol pre-cleaning in the video was unnecessary. Cleaning like that did NOT seem to remove well the sort of seal coat on top of the solder joints, and the joints got reflowed well even where that seal coat was present. Anyway, overall it is a great video.
So happy to save $80, have a bit of technical fun with my sons, and to know my actual speed now!