DEAD PIXELS???

[floyd 1.8 turbo]

I've got a 1.8t sport on an s plate, In the morning when i go to work the square display panel in between the rev counter and speedo is fine, perfectly readable.
When the car has warmed up the pixels start to distort then after a while the screen is barely readable, just has random red dots everywhere!!
What the f**k is going on?? Cant understand why it works then
doesnt?? Someone help!

Thanks

 

[Broken Byzan]

Standard fault sadly, its around £140 to fix if you send your dash to germany, then you are carless cos the immobiliser is housed in the dash. Also because the immo is part of the dash, you cant swap a secondhand dash in to fix it as you would need the SKC code that was supplied with the car from new,and that wouldnt be very likely with a 10 year old car thats being broken etc

 

[floyd 1.8 turbo]

Darn it! Can it be removed easily?.. i've got a good few years experiance stripping cars but i'm not really up for removing the whole dash?!
Is there not anywhere in the u.k that does it?

 

[olds_kool]

try this
http://www.audiforums.com/m_594592/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm
i removed metal cover and used some card in between to press down on ribbon and its a lot better

 

[Broken Byzan]

IIRC its about 4 screws,make sure you drop the steering wheel down and put a towel on the cowling to prevent scracthing it when you wiggle the dash out. Its 3 plugs in the back and out she comes. Its allegedly the ribbon that fails and although i am quite a technical person i cannot solder these small things.

If you do know an electrical engineer you may get a second hand dash and swap out the display and ribbon with minimal downtime. Thats what i hope to do myself as i bought a brand new unit from Ebay some time ago, just need to find someone willing to do the swap for me

 

[floyd 1.8 turbo]

So you've actually done that have you? Need to know that its worth doing because it sounds like a bit of a mission?!

 

[floyd 1.8 turbo]

Nice one cheers fella

 

[olds_kool]

yes, tried it, only took half hour ish, clocks easy to remove unless youve got very big hands, mine had dead pixel lines aswell as dimming problem so i thought what have i got to lose, still got lines missing but now readable and dimming problem a lot better although not had many warm days to fully test, will try it again and see if i can find something better than the folded rizla pack i used to add pressure

 

[Turbo Lag FTW]

Yeah this problem deffo major pain, I get it on a real warm day. Otherwise its really readable.

 

[rasA4]

it would be great if we could do some kind of "power buy" or something, im sure a lot of us has this problem

 

[Broken Byzan]

http://www.audizine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=184010

I have been watching this one also

 

[Siena]

Hmm. I must be lucky.

My car's done 208,000 miles, and so far, no dead pixels.

I've got 3 spare complete clusters though. Luckily, on pre-'99 cars, the cluster doesn't have the combi-processor for the immobilliser, so replacement is no grief.

 

[Broken Byzan]

It does mate, on about mid 97 on its an SKC issue to swap them . Without the SKC it cannot be doen without dealer intervention IE immo 2 and above, mine is a 98 and she is immo2

 

[floyd 1.8 turbo]

So can i just simply buy another one and swap it over? what about the mileage?

 

[Siena]

Hmm.

So, '96 cars rule then! Mine runs without the cluster, and works fine with the other 3.

 

[Broken Byzan]

mine is dead without cluster. The ealier cars were seperate units for the IMMO they got intergrated about mid 97 iirc, WHY ????? lol

 

[SmoothAssault]

Yea, I've got this problem. My mate was in the car yesterday and couldn't believe it when he looked at the temperature saying "-5.5'C". I had to tell him that the pixels that would have made it "+5.5'C" decide not to work sometimes. But the whole screen goes dodgy on some days and it's barely readable at all.

 

[Markey]

How do you tell which IMMO the car is as im getting new clocks on thinking that they are just going to work straight away.

 

[Siena]

Markey, what year is your car?

 

[Markey]

Its a R reg but i cant be specific on date of manufacure etc.

 

[rasA4]

http://www.audizine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=184010

I have been watching this one also

cheers just read the whole post shame he is in the states luckly mine isnt that bad yet can live with it for now (touch wood). let me know how it goes m8.
i would like to see the write up he does.

 

[Jimbo.King]

I had problems with mine back end of last year, tried removing the metal surround trick and it knacked up all together, so if its working something like i wouldn’t mess too much trying it as it wont work as i found out when mine totally went.

This is what i found and concluded what happens,
There is a ribbon cable attached to the centre display which has 51 terminals, on the display end it is glued / bonded to the glass, this is not where the problem is, it’s the other end that’s soldered to the dash’s circuit board.

Through time some of the 51 terminals on the ribbon cable end up breaking from the circuit board between the soldered part and where the plastic ribbon is.

These are only a hairline cracks and when it’s hot / cold the display will change i.e dead lines, depending on how many connections have broke and whether they make a contact again as parts expand / contract.

I bought a new Audi cluster off eBay with the same centre display, stripped it down, unsoldered it and fit it to my original cluster, it was a very tricky and time consuming job and was well happy when i plugged it in and it all worked.

 

[Broken Byzan]

I too have a new dash,t strip for the part, but its too fiddly for me to do, anyone want to earn a drink and swap it for me?

 

[Jimbo.King]

Depends on how big the drink is

 

[rasA4]

Great job Jimbo King how long did it take you to do?

 

[Jimbo.King]

Great job Jimbo King how long did it take you to do?

It took approx 3 hours to do and a steady hand with the soldering iron, still going strong after 6 months.

 

[rasA4]

excellent how much did you pay for the donor unit, was it new?

 

[Jimbo.King]

I bought 2 clusters in all but the 1st one was a complete sham but i learnt a lot off it, that was from an 2000 S4 at about £63 inc p/p, the 2nd cluster (which was new) i tried a different approach which worked spot on, this was for a b5 A4 at £62 inc p/p.

 

[kninio]

I had the same issue but i fix it with out changing the screen just i set something to press the cable to the bord , its not that the cable crack its that the glue get week and it peel off from the dashbord!!

 

[olds_kool]

took clocks out again to have a look, jimbo k you must have one steady hand!!! anyway now my clock doesnt work and my needle judders at 5k rpm but after placing more cardboard to press where ribbon joins board, and a couple of days later only 2 dead lines in orange part!!! whether the couple of warm days helped i dont know, but it was perfectly readable when temp was reading 15 deg
also, they seem to be 2 seperate problems, i know because i used to own car that floyd 1.8t started thread about that it didnt have any dead lines just dimmed as car warmed up, and my wifes avant is the same, but my new car had half of all lines missing and dimmed as it warmed up, so adding pressure to screen does seem to help with the dimming, and adding pressure to board join seems to help with missing lines, if anyone trys it i would add a little heat with a hairdryer then add something to add pressure