A few months back I attempted to replace the D5 bulb on the instrument cluster without researching on how to gain access. The mistake I made was I didn't remove the tachometer as an assembly, so by prying on the circuit board to gain access to the bulbs I cracked the fragile digital gear readout.

I found out that the digital gear readout is not available as a separate part so I found a used instrument cluster assembly on e-bay and successfully swapped out the digital readout using my soldering iron and solder sucker. The screw that holds in the plastic housing is soldered to the circuit board. By heating the screw with a soldering iron it can be removed with a screw driver. I then heated each of the pins and removed the solder with the solder sucker. With the solder removed I simply swapped the working readout in place and soldered the pins and screw back in place.

My instrument cluster works like new again. In case your wondering why I went through the trouble to swap the readout instead of swapping the entire cluster, I wanted to keep my odometer displaying the original miles since I perform all my own maintenance. I could have shaved off 18K miles by using the newer instrument cluster. I am actually surprised that Acura doesn't have anything to prevent someone from switching out the instrument cluster to alter the odometer reading.

 

True... Sometimes it shows up after you do a smog though.