Today at Atelier Kaz - ex-Honda R&D, F1, Indy/CART engineer

After receiving the gauge cluster, although it was clear that someone already worked on it previously, couldn’t see the hidden black tape over the [BRAKE LAMP] indicator.

It was done at the LED module that can’t be seen unless disassembling the display module itself.

Seems clever but as stated later, please never do such thing.

100% confirmed that it led to the warning display HIC failure.

This was the 2nd one with such serious failure.













Very lucky that the owner didn’t catch cabin fire at that time.

I need re-visiting the discussion with my friend in Japan on getting the replacement HIC as I ran out of HIC spare now.


Thank you to drew on here and Prime.

He kindly sent me the replacement HIC by visiting the breaker yard in his country.

It’s an OEM one and worked fine.



As mentioned many times,
please never ever cover up the [BRAKE LAMP] failure indicator.



This is one of the most reported first sign of capacitor leakage for the gauge cluster.

If you miss it, you could end up with small cabin fire.

Yes, it’s true and already happened on enough number of NSX in Japan and in US.

You can search on Prime for the owner’s real story or use translate app to turn ‘gauge cluster burnt’ into Japanese and look for many serious photo out on Japanese site.

I can back this up as one time, Japan Transport Office, Fire department authority, Honda R&D, Gauge manufacture all sat down together to discuss the matter.