Home
What's new
Latest activity
Authors
Store
Latest reviews
Search products
Forums
New posts
Search forums
What's new
New posts
New listings
New products
New profile posts
Latest activity
Members
Current visitors
New profile posts
Search profile posts
Log in
Register
Cart
Cart
Loading…
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Search forums
Search titles only
By:
Menu
Log in
Register
Navigation
Install the app
Install
More options
Change style
Contact us
Close Menu
Forums
Cobra Forums
The Terminator
Terminator Talk
Cluster inverter reverse engineering project
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="mwolson" data-source="post: 16798019" data-attributes="member: 16006"><p>My customer's cluster had a bad EL panel it turned out. I swapped his PCB into a junkyard donor cluster to get him back on the road. I have learned that you should measure many MOhms of resistance across a good EL panel. I read about 14KOhms across the bad panel, so low resistance is a symptom of a bad EL panel, not a bad inverter.</p><p></p><p>It isn't always the inverter that fails. With the good EL panel, my DVM said it was about 43MOhms which then went up to about 100MOhms and then went off the scale.</p><p></p><p>My customer had assumed that the inverter had failed, so he had bought a SpeedHut inverter, which he included when he shipped the cluster to me. It turned out that the new SpeedHut inverter was also dead so I couldn't see what kind of signal it puts out. SpeedHut has sent a replacement inverter to the customer.</p><p></p><p>I was corresponding with SpeedHut support about this issue. People have noticed that their clusters are dimmer with the SpeedHut inverter. The SpeedHut support person said that the EL panels brighten and dim based on the amplitude of the sine wave going into the panel. SpeedHut says that the amplitude of the output of their inverters should be 100-200 VAC.</p><p></p><p>I was able to get a scope on AC signal going into the working cluster EL panel with a working Ford inverter. I saw a 300VAC P-P, 450Hz signal on the scope:</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1755136[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>When I unhooked the EL panel to see what the Ford inverter puts out with no load, it shot up to over 400VAC, which is the limit that my scope can see:</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1755137[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>While it is safe to check the resistance of the EL panel with an ohmeter, it is NOT SAFE to work on a powered up inverter. 100VAC can kill you and >400VAC can really kill you. So BE VERY CAREFUL if you decide to test an inverter yourself. Make sure you are not alone working on this stuff and make sure that whoever is with you is CPR trained. I lost a fellow grad student in grad school who was working on a high power laser power supply. We all learned CPR after that. I am not responsible if you get yourself killed working on your instrument cluster.</p><p></p><p>Also, make sure that your test equipment can handle at least 1000VAC if you are going to test one of these yourself.</p><p></p><p>Just a reminder, I am still looking for any dead inverters I can get so I can dig deeper into reverse engineering these things.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="mwolson, post: 16798019, member: 16006"] My customer's cluster had a bad EL panel it turned out. I swapped his PCB into a junkyard donor cluster to get him back on the road. I have learned that you should measure many MOhms of resistance across a good EL panel. I read about 14KOhms across the bad panel, so low resistance is a symptom of a bad EL panel, not a bad inverter. It isn't always the inverter that fails. With the good EL panel, my DVM said it was about 43MOhms which then went up to about 100MOhms and then went off the scale. My customer had assumed that the inverter had failed, so he had bought a SpeedHut inverter, which he included when he shipped the cluster to me. It turned out that the new SpeedHut inverter was also dead so I couldn't see what kind of signal it puts out. SpeedHut has sent a replacement inverter to the customer. I was corresponding with SpeedHut support about this issue. People have noticed that their clusters are dimmer with the SpeedHut inverter. The SpeedHut support person said that the EL panels brighten and dim based on the amplitude of the sine wave going into the panel. SpeedHut says that the amplitude of the output of their inverters should be 100-200 VAC. I was able to get a scope on AC signal going into the working cluster EL panel with a working Ford inverter. I saw a 300VAC P-P, 450Hz signal on the scope: [ATTACH type="full" alt="1658276879342.jpeg"]1755136[/ATTACH] When I unhooked the EL panel to see what the Ford inverter puts out with no load, it shot up to over 400VAC, which is the limit that my scope can see: [ATTACH type="full" alt="1658276990782.jpeg"]1755137[/ATTACH] While it is safe to check the resistance of the EL panel with an ohmeter, it is NOT SAFE to work on a powered up inverter. 100VAC can kill you and >400VAC can really kill you. So BE VERY CAREFUL if you decide to test an inverter yourself. Make sure you are not alone working on this stuff and make sure that whoever is with you is CPR trained. I lost a fellow grad student in grad school who was working on a high power laser power supply. We all learned CPR after that. I am not responsible if you get yourself killed working on your instrument cluster. Also, make sure that your test equipment can handle at least 1000VAC if you are going to test one of these yourself. Just a reminder, I am still looking for any dead inverters I can get so I can dig deeper into reverse engineering these things. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Forums
Cobra Forums
The Terminator
Terminator Talk
Cluster inverter reverse engineering project
Top