Mysterious components

Hey all,

I helped out a friend yesterday with the infamous no dash display combined with car not shutting off properly issue. We swapped out his instrumentation assembly with a known good one, and now I’m analyzing his old part to see if I can locate the issue.(it wasn’t that little 100uf capacitor).

My question today is, as I remove all the plastic covers on the assembly, I encountered 2 tiny circuit boards that are on the small cable that plugs into the right end of the main display board, they are in small plastic T shaped housings with a small black plastic cap. They are some sort of sensor boards, the stem of the T comtains a small steel pellet that can rattle in the housing, there is a sensor on the board that monitors it. When the assembly is in correct position, the pellet rests against the sensor. Does anybody know what these are for? My first guess is some sort of rollover sensors, but they only plug into the display board with plain connectors (not yellow).

 

The cluster is upside down in my bench in these pictures, the circuit boards would normally be on bottom.

 

Interesting...... I would’ve never guessed that, yet it makes sense!