Clock fix ground question
 

So I put new capacitors in my clock last night just as many other people here have. I ran into a problem I haven't read about, though. The ground pin seemed to be connected to the copper ring by more than just solder and I had to pry the thing off to get the clock out (it didn't work anyway so what the heck, right?).

Anyway, there is now no copper ring where one once was. I'm thinking this copper was some sort of fuse? I'm not really knowledgable when it comes to electricity. The ring is destroyed and cannot be put back on.

My question is, what should I do? Is it important to replace this copper piece? Can some other material be substituted? And importantly, what is the best way to attach the copper or whatever other metal I might use to the back of the instrument cluster?

As usual, any help will be greatly appreciated.

The ring is probably there to releive stress-solder alone doesn't have very much strength against vibration, etc. Jumpering a short piece of wire from the tip of the clock ground to the copper on the PCB will probably be OK. Make sure that you don't short any other traces while doing this.

Thanks for the reply. I will probaby try this, but I'm not sure what the PCB is...

PCB=the printed circuit board. Make sure you connect the short piece of wire you solder on from the the pin of the clock to the place where the metal ring once connected. Don't overheat, because the pin is embedded in the plastic frame of the clock.

I dug out a tach and I see the problem - the metal ring is (brazed?) to the back of the metal, not a PCB. In this case, you will have to work a little harder to fix this - either rough-sand a patch of the metal and solder a jumper wire to the metal (not easy without some flux and a big-a** soldering iron) and then to the clock ground or jumper the clock pin to a true ground on the cluster itself - perhaps a wire would be easier.