1st big thanks to Agressor110 over on audiforum.us for some notes & help on things to enable me to complete this mod, few questions I had answered quickly & easy, so many thanks to him, kudos.
Here's some install info & images of my 09 white cluster/dis fitted to my 04 car, think its great, really is so much better:
Ok well 1st thing to note is cars before the 1st facelift 8P pre 11/04 generally had the older fuel pump & also possibly missed some wiring that was added to facelift cars. Please note though my car is 07/04 & had the extra wire so contradicts audi's info in Elsawin of all places, so check for this wire on rear of current cluster 1st before thinking wiring needed, read further down for wiring info. The newer pumps from this date (according to audi's records anyway, check 1st before doing) had an extra wire added for the fuel sender/level to register properly on the clusters. So if you have the older cars then you must add a single wire from the cluster 32pin connector at pin 25 & wire this back to the underneath of the rear seats on a 3dr anyway (maybe same as 5dr, need checking) to the fuel pump & connect to pin 4 on the 5 pin connector. Now you also need to upgrade the pump on pre 11/04 cars (but check cause on my 07/04 car I had the newer wiring but old pump) to support the newer sender/level reading for fuel in the cluster. Once the pump is swapped & the extra wire fitted, then you just need to swap the cluster out & get it coded with all your keys & you're away. Now if its a new cluster or less than 100kmh then audi can set it all correctly for your existing mileage, if its more then you'd have to put up with the used cluster mileage.
Now there are mileage correctors, but I've done some investigations & there are only a few who can currently change the mileage on such a new cluster if its used given the encryption, believe me I have chatted with fair few & also been to a guy whose tried several times even with new firmware & he couldnt change to the correct mileage, but when its more openly able to be done I will change it as per the ecu data.
For 11/04 & onwards cars, subject to checking of course, it should really be just as simple as get the new cluster & take to audi to be swapped coded to the car, cause you should have the new wire already & also the newer pump, again you can check this by looking up the pump part for your vin & also remove the cluster to see if that pin is wired already, simple way to see if the wire on pin 25 is functional, just remove the pin from the 32 connector & reinsert cluster to car & start car & the fuel level shouldnt show, according to my test anyway on newer cluster.
You ideally need to do all the work at the dealers given the pump etc has to ideally be done at same time as the cluster swap, given the fuel levels wont show until new cluster installed if pre 11/04, but what you can do to save on time/money at the dealer is to remove all the trims neccessary for them to do the work, so rear lower bench seat, side trims for extra wire if not doing self, trims around the cluster, remove bolts etc etc, cause mine took 1 hour to complete where as it was initially 2-3 hours, so my bill was £100 to install new pump & cluster because I'd done all this pre-work, saved me £100-£200 which for me is well worth it.
Make sure to take all keys with you to the dealer, along with the full car docs including ID of the registered cars owner as audi are getting **** hot on this kinda thing now, they wont touch until verified whose car is & they have authority to do, so service book, mot, V5, home bill, license, passport etc then they will code for immo & security systems with new cluster.
When removing the cluster & then reconnecting, you will get some warnings showing up, now as long as its the same cluster inserted these warnings will disappear when driving again, so dont worry to much, but worst case scenario is you need to do a few procedures to rectify as per this page:
http://wiki.ross-tech.com/index.php/Audi_A3_(8P)_Steering_Assist
One thing to realise is this, when they add the cluster one thing that was showing were lights up for braking systems, now I knew it was an adaptation issue to tell the car that it had abs, esp etc etc, so I said to steve master tech, just go into this channel & code this option mate (hold the front page, me advising a master tech what to do, feck me, never thought that would happen in million years) so he went in to the adaptations & that channel but couldnt, we put this down to security access, so we went in to that & I said just enter the security code, he said we dont have access to that area, I was like thats impossible, he said no mate cant do.
So what I did, I went home, plugged in VCDS, went into 17, security access to which vcds prompted me to enter a certain code that was displayed, entered, went into adaptation channel 37 & set to 11 given mines 2wd where as 4wd is 00 I think, but quick browse in there can advise which is correct for your car, this told car what braking systems etc I had, lights all went out, job done.
Also to get advanced features again in DIS for pdc, lights etc, you may have to adjust the cluster coding in 17 & adaptation channel 82 to a 2 & then in 09 long coding byte 23 tick bit 1 for advanced comfort menus, cause I found mine wernt working when left audi, until after when I got my VCDS logged in & coding fingers into it.
Feel free to ask questions but think covered it all.
Here's some install info & images of my 09 white cluster/dis fitted to my 04 car, think its great, really is so much better:
Ok well 1st thing to note is cars before the 1st facelift 8P pre 11/04 generally had the older fuel pump & also possibly missed some wiring that was added to facelift cars. Please note though my car is 07/04 & had the extra wire so contradicts audi's info in Elsawin of all places, so check for this wire on rear of current cluster 1st before thinking wiring needed, read further down for wiring info. The newer pumps from this date (according to audi's records anyway, check 1st before doing) had an extra wire added for the fuel sender/level to register properly on the clusters. So if you have the older cars then you must add a single wire from the cluster 32pin connector at pin 25 & wire this back to the underneath of the rear seats on a 3dr anyway (maybe same as 5dr, need checking) to the fuel pump & connect to pin 4 on the 5 pin connector. Now you also need to upgrade the pump on pre 11/04 cars (but check cause on my 07/04 car I had the newer wiring but old pump) to support the newer sender/level reading for fuel in the cluster. Once the pump is swapped & the extra wire fitted, then you just need to swap the cluster out & get it coded with all your keys & you're away. Now if its a new cluster or less than 100kmh then audi can set it all correctly for your existing mileage, if its more then you'd have to put up with the used cluster mileage.
Now there are mileage correctors, but I've done some investigations & there are only a few who can currently change the mileage on such a new cluster if its used given the encryption, believe me I have chatted with fair few & also been to a guy whose tried several times even with new firmware & he couldnt change to the correct mileage, but when its more openly able to be done I will change it as per the ecu data.
For 11/04 & onwards cars, subject to checking of course, it should really be just as simple as get the new cluster & take to audi to be swapped coded to the car, cause you should have the new wire already & also the newer pump, again you can check this by looking up the pump part for your vin & also remove the cluster to see if that pin is wired already, simple way to see if the wire on pin 25 is functional, just remove the pin from the 32 connector & reinsert cluster to car & start car & the fuel level shouldnt show, according to my test anyway on newer cluster.
You ideally need to do all the work at the dealers given the pump etc has to ideally be done at same time as the cluster swap, given the fuel levels wont show until new cluster installed if pre 11/04, but what you can do to save on time/money at the dealer is to remove all the trims neccessary for them to do the work, so rear lower bench seat, side trims for extra wire if not doing self, trims around the cluster, remove bolts etc etc, cause mine took 1 hour to complete where as it was initially 2-3 hours, so my bill was £100 to install new pump & cluster because I'd done all this pre-work, saved me £100-£200 which for me is well worth it.
Make sure to take all keys with you to the dealer, along with the full car docs including ID of the registered cars owner as audi are getting **** hot on this kinda thing now, they wont touch until verified whose car is & they have authority to do, so service book, mot, V5, home bill, license, passport etc then they will code for immo & security systems with new cluster.
When removing the cluster & then reconnecting, you will get some warnings showing up, now as long as its the same cluster inserted these warnings will disappear when driving again, so dont worry to much, but worst case scenario is you need to do a few procedures to rectify as per this page:
http://wiki.ross-tech.com/index.php/Audi_A3_(8P)_Steering_Assist
One thing to realise is this, when they add the cluster one thing that was showing were lights up for braking systems, now I knew it was an adaptation issue to tell the car that it had abs, esp etc etc, so I said to steve master tech, just go into this channel & code this option mate (hold the front page, me advising a master tech what to do, feck me, never thought that would happen in million years) so he went in to the adaptations & that channel but couldnt, we put this down to security access, so we went in to that & I said just enter the security code, he said we dont have access to that area, I was like thats impossible, he said no mate cant do.
So what I did, I went home, plugged in VCDS, went into 17, security access to which vcds prompted me to enter a certain code that was displayed, entered, went into adaptation channel 37 & set to 11 given mines 2wd where as 4wd is 00 I think, but quick browse in there can advise which is correct for your car, this told car what braking systems etc I had, lights all went out, job done.
Also to get advanced features again in DIS for pdc, lights etc, you may have to adjust the cluster coding in 17 & adaptation channel 82 to a 2 & then in 09 long coding byte 23 tick bit 1 for advanced comfort menus, cause I found mine wernt working when left audi, until after when I got my VCDS logged in & coding fingers into it.
Feel free to ask questions but think covered it all.