What's wrong with this part?
 

Okay, I was removing my dash cluster and accidentally touched a screwdriver to a peice of metal. Then I saw a little smoke. I diagramed below what happened.

Following this, my fuel and temp needles bounce like crazy when ever the wheels are spinning, but not when they are stopped.

then..
 

then i removed the appropriate cluster and looked at the circuit board to see if i saw anything unusual.

there seemed to be a long strip of copper with a break in the middle, some stains around it that would have been smoke. could this be the cause of the problem?

if so, is it fixable? and how would i fix it?

thanks a lot... i learned a lot from this mistake already!

eric

one more pic

Well, the pin you crossed on the back is 12V + for the clock and from where the smoke is coming from is the back of the multigauge cluster. Was the round connector on the back hooked up when you shorted it out? I think it is most likley that you grounded power, or shorted 12V to the gauges that are acting up. Easiest thing to try would be replacing the multigauge cluster to see if this solves the problem. If you need a cheap multigauge cluster let me know. Look for burnt parts on the cluster and let me know what you find.

Ah didn't see second picture - just solder a wire to each side of the "broken" copper and you should be good to go agian (to complete the circut)

Sounds like Breckman hit the nail on the head. But as a last resort, you could send the cluster to VDO or Palo Alto Speedometer and have them go through it.

Soldering across is the way to go, but make sure you use a low wattage iron, like a cheapy cork on a pencile type. That copper is so thin there is a very small window of hot enough to blown away, end up with the latter and you'll really have a problem...I am assuming one of the things you learned, as you mentioned, was to disconnect your battery before working on electrical components. If not, add it;)