2005 combination meter not working again?…

It's a great skill to be able to know how to replace a capacitor... Way better than hitting your dash... There's no other known problems with combination meter other than that capacitor so either you need to swap it out again, or something didn't get reconnected right when you did the work and it took a little while to get loose.

 

I'm trying to find out the part that couldn't be connected right that I might have done if that's even possible My dash on the '09 has been going off for the 3 years that I've owned the car The car has 200,000 miles I got a like new display out of a 94,000 mile garage vehicle that was literally owned by a little old lady and it looked brand new other than the dent in the bumper and the reason the car was totaled seriously this was just a year and a half ago I went to the vehicle and stripped the whole car for like $100 I took out the dash the heads up display all of it. Had the part sitting in my shop for a month or two My display was still coming on by restarting the car or driving a few minutes coming out of the store turning it back on and having full display whenever my display is off miles in the MFD is not shown nor is the current gas mileage etc those spaces are blank as well as the trip meters aren't taking mileage while I'm driving with the combination meter not powered up but I know the mileage I'm traveling because I'm usually going my same route everyday and I can tell you those miles by looking out the window to within tenths. After changing my heads up display with the one out of the 94,000 mi car the dash immediately worked when powered up It worked for months and months and months one day I got in the car pushed the button blank display but my car will back up and go forward I turn the car off literally wait 3 seconds Hit the button the dash immediately lights up just like it's supposed to or off and running. I've had this happen several times with this low mileage display that I got from this car other than that nothing flawless I too can't believe that this other dash from this other vehicle has all of a sudden become faulty just because I went and removed it from the near perfect condition woman's car? I find this truly hard to believe or that it's just happened because it's that time my car was just right at 180,000 mi when this started to happen My 05 same mileage 200 plus so within 20K and now I've got this part out of this 94,000 mi car which is 100,000 miles less than the other two basically and bam this problem shows its ugly head in my '09. The guy at Texas hybrid says it's something further down the line that's causing my particular issue because once the display is dead usually it stays pretty much dead that's his story this was told to me when I first started fooling with this generation too and the guy is stuck to that story the whole time every time I've talked to them.

 

I haven't cracked the factory manual the real book to actually look at the wiring diagrams but I'm thinking those two big white plugs under the plastic dash pad that the heads up display plugs into there's something going on with that like there's two 12 volt feeds one on each one of the plugs If one of those is missing on boot up the display won't light or something like that something that's redundant that's built in and it should be obvious to me.

 

Usually, when something starts working after hitting it there is a loose wire or connection involved, so, yes it could be something else.

Have you checked all the connectors that connect the combination meter and also both ends of the cable that goes to the inclination meter that they are securely connected and seated properly?

 

That behavior is also common with a cracked solder joint. Not to cast aspersions on the soldering skills of the OP, but are we confident that both legs of the replacement capacitor are all the way through the holes in the board, and that the solder stuck well to both the wire and the pad on the board?

It isn't uncommon to cook a component when soldering it in, however, I wouldn't have expected that sort of failure to respond to blows on the dash.

 

You may also want to run a carfax on it, to see if someone rolled back the odometer. Not a capacitor issue but someone altering the mileage and screwed it up.

Just a guess.......

 

Glad you found it. Making reliable solder joints for vibration prone environments is much tougher than one might assume. This is a particular problem if the part being soldered is to be sent off into space, where repair is pretty much out of the question. So NASA has really detailed soldering instructions:

https://nepp.nasa.gov/docuploads/06AA01BA-FC7E-4094-AE829CE371A7B05D/NASA-STD-8739.3.pdf

Not a terrible idea to follow those guidelines when soldering components for use in cars. It might seem like overkill, but as you found out, their methods are still a good idea. Better to take a few seconds longer on the soldering than to have to spend hours and hours tearing apart the dash again!