My BMW K75C’s instrument cluster clock never worked while I owned it. I’d read this article, and hoped to be able to fix it. Also, once or twice I’d actually seen the clock half working, so I had good hop that it was repairable.
I removed the instrument cluster and opened it as per the instructions. I cleaned up the LCD contacts, and hooked the clock up to 6 volt power. Not all the LCD segments worked, but about 70% of them did so it was usable. Repeated cleaning and washing of the contacts and the «zebra strips» didn’t seem to do anything. I suppose the LCD were in fact broken.
I put everything back together, installed the instruments on the bike, and switched the power on. No clock. To make a short story even shorter, there was a problem with the clock’s power connector: One of the two long connector pins that connects to the clock module had lost its electrical connection, which is supposed to go to pin 1 of the instrument cluster’s connector (red/white wire). This was the actual problem (beyond the half-working LCD). The picture below shows the exact position where the connection was broken. The row of pins you see there are the instrument cluster’s connector, and the two holes near the center are the bases of the two power connector pins for the clock module.
A tiny bit of copper wire and a bit of soldering fixed the connection. I reconnected everything, and voila! Partial success:
The picture above is actually a bit flattering to the LCD, as I think none of the remaining 5 segments on the hours side works, so «22» is the only number that shows (almost) well. I did also try to fix the missing gear indicator LCD segments, but as you can see to little avail.
Odometer: 112977.
59.952286
10.715370