About a week ago, there was water leaking in what looked like the top of the driver door. About 5 days later, my instrument cluster essentially stopped working. It does get power, just very strange behaviour.

When the car is on:
- Several lights (like headlights, and seatbelt warning) are constantly on.
- I should have a check engine light, that is not on
- All 3 dials/needles are constantly all the way at the bottom. So the gas gauge says empty. The speedometer says 0 (regardless of how fast I'm driving) etc...
- The screen in the middle, is blank

When the car is OFF:
- The headlights like is constantly on (headlights are off)
- The needles are lit up
- The backlight on the screen in the middle is lit up.
All of those stay on all the time.

Additionally, the lights the light up the fan control, the temperature, do not light up
And finally, the AC stopped working. When I press the AC button to turn on the AC, the little green light on that button does turn on, but the air never cools. And I used the AC less than a week ago and it was working.

I have attached pictures of the 2 states. The darker one is with the engine off. The other one (with other cars) is driving on the highway.

Being in Canada, I can't simply buy a used one on ebay because they are all in miles. I also haven't been able to find a place that fixes clusters (I found some in the US that you can ship them to, but because of the border right now, I need a Canadian location).

I checked all the fuses in the car and none were blown.

My questions are:
- I have replaced a cluster on a different car years ago. Do you think if I get the cluster out, it is something I could fix myself? Without replacing logic boards or soldering? Any guides or recommendation for this?
- I found a junk yard that has a standard 2008 honda fit. Assuming it still has the cluster, is the 2008 compatible with the 2009?

​​​​​​​Thanks.

 

Answering your last two questions:

You will need a dealer visit at the minimum to either attempt to move the EEPROM from the old to new cluster OR just to program the new one if the old one is dead. Requires a Honda scan tool or equivalent to set mileage in the new replacement cluster. Try to buy another Canadian cluster, but all clusters made for the GE8 sold in north American work. Euro and JDM clusters don't, different pinout.

Second question, the '08 is a completely different car to the '09, won't work. Anything from '09-13 in the US and up to 2014 in Canada are all second gen.

 

Thanks for the reply.


I ended up pulling out all the fuses and checking each one. All were good. Put them back in. Did try turning the car on or anything. And last night used the car and everything is back to normal. The AC is working again, the cluster is working as it should. Could it be that a fuse I removed and reinserted was causing this?