many many people are complaining of the same exact issue with the clock light. It goes on and off and comes back on with a good slap. this shows that nothing is really broken there is just something making a bad connection.

can someone with electrical knowledge and experience find out what is causing the problem? Im sure some one can find out if it is the wiring harness or pins in the unit where the harness attaches to.

I have done alot of reading i have not read a real fix or diagnosis to the issue. I have use an electronics lubricant and that helped but only for so long. After reading I have also found that no one is having any other types of problems with the clock display, such a faulty pixels.

I am going to take a look at the service manual and try to find a wiring diagram to pitch in my since i have no idea how to interpret them

 

clock circuit diagram here from page 22-303. pretty sure this indicates the wire that controls the light on the clock is the red/blue one

wiring diagram by coach.jibran, on Flickr

 

being eager to fix this, i took a look at the harness and found a few red/blue wires. I flexed them a little bit and put some pressure on them towards the harness, jamming the pins in there. I put it back together and it worked perfectly. i gave the clock a few slaps and it did not flicker.

We'll see how long this lasts. I will report back in a few weeks. If anyone else trys this out report back here please

 

Have an '05 RL with clock display intermittently going out and a slap or bump make it come back on.

Not sure if it is related, but the Navi Display Screen also goes from normal brightness to much darker - almost like contrast changed darker - intermittently.

Do you need to remove the glove box to get into this?

 

I dont know about the RL but it dont think you would need to go though the glove box for the screen.

UPDATE: its been a few weeks now and i still have no light flickering on the clock display. Seems to be a good fix. Just take off the clock and push the blue wire with the red stripe on it into the harness with a little pressure and reconnect everything.

 

Had the same problem and ended up just replacing the entire unit that I purchased on eBay. I haven't had any problems since then...

 

Not an electrician, but I took enough EE classes I think.

Possible problems: The yellow wire heading into the clock isn't connected all that well, the red/blue wire isn't connected that well in the clock, or lastly, and the first thing I'd check, the ground (black wire) heading out of there, that thing is probably grounded to an upper part of the dash with a poor connection.

If you haven't figured it out in a few weeks before I get my dash apart, I'll investigate then, until then, good luck.

 

I figured it out,

The red/blue wire was loose. no problems since

 

Hello,

I had this issue and I thought I fixed it with this issue, but it came back and got worse and worse. I ended up opening it up and this is what I found when I pryed the green housing off that the actual pins were no longer secured to the board, which is why the display was not working. This is how it looked.

<a href="http://s745.photobucket.com/user/paweljaro/media/tl/other%20tl/IMG_1188_zpsfozsknyr.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i745.photobucket.com/albums/xx96/paweljaro/tl/other%20tl/IMG_1188_zpsfozsknyr.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo IMG_1188_zpsfozsknyr.jpg"/></a>

I soldered it back on and has been working like new.

<a href="http://s745.photobucket.com/user/paweljaro/media/tl/other%20tl/IMG_1192_zpsqq9k5raq.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i745.photobucket.com/albums/xx96/paweljaro/tl/other%20tl/IMG_1192_zpsqq9k5raq.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo IMG_1192_zpsqq9k5raq.jpg"/></a>