Buckle up, this might take a minute to explain. I just bought a 97 Volvo 850 turbo t5 from a not so trustworthy character about a month ago now, among numerous other issues the speedo, tach, fuel gauge and temp gauge all stopped working suddenly after not driving it for a few days (the odo and trip were broken upon purchase already), and now the ABS light is off (it was on while the gauges were working) and the transmission arrow light was on, and then it briefly turned off and then back on during all of this. The engine is throwing: P0172 bank 1 system too rich, and P0500 Vehicle speed sensor A. I tried switching out fuse 35 with a new one and it worked for about five minutes, went through a bunch of different fuses and all of them looked and tested fine but none of them gave me any success, but the sunroof is working fine (which is apart of fuse 35) so it can’t be a fuse issue. I tried taking the cluster out and examining everything, and nothing APPEARED to be damaged, all of the soldering and wires looked just about new. Tried jiggling the key, no success, nor have I had any problems out of the ignition. So now I’m just scratching my head, any advice?

 

I just noticed something that I overlooked apparently, on the instrument cluster circuit board there appears to be an asymmetrical brown caramel-ish glaze over two medium sized sections of the board. Almost like someone spilled coffee on the thing. I can post pics after work. Could this mean a dead cluster, or is there ways to clean this?

 

Something else I just noticed is that my clock is staying on constantly now, and the clock is the only thing that works other than the boost gauge. It’s odd to me that the clock will appear, but the info screens will not.