So I'll start by saying I've been searching the forum and elsewhere, and haven't seen anything that completely answers the question "how screwed am I?"...

I just recently got my '86 back from my sister (after she'd beat on it for a number of years as a college car). She claims that the HVAC controls "just stopped lighting up" one day, yet swears the large coffee stain across the front of the unit had nothing to do with it.

One or two of the LED's were lighting, but the temp display was not showing and only one of the backlights worked. I pulled the unit apart, and despite the buttons being literally frozen solid from the coffee / gunk build-up, there was very little in the way of noticeable coffee stain / corrosion on the board. That all cleaned off quickly, and though there was a decent amount of gunk build-up around the leads going into the display, everything appears to be relatively clean.

I'd accidentally ordered a new faceplate thinking it came with the circuit board (kind of naïve of me to think so), but I'll still likely end up using that since it's a lot cleaner than the original. I pried up the front to main board contacts in the white receptacle to improve contact, yet this only appears to have made things worse.

At this point, only one of the bulbs appears to work, and now that bulb and the two working LED's flicker quite a bit. The display still doesn't come on, yet with all this, I can't see anything that would suggest damage or corrosion on the boards. So, any ideas? Should I just begin looking for another control unit?

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for any help you can provide.