Dashboard Pixel repairs

[acme8850]

Hi,
I am experiencing the common missing pixels on the clock and temp guage on my Facelift E320 CDI.
Does anyone know a way to cure this?
I have seen the adverts for around 150 quid, send it away and all will be cured.
However I was looking for a cheaper solution that perhaps I could perform myself.
Any ideas?

Regards
Vern

 

[Marc Open]

Display

Vern, Farouk at Speedo Fixer will turn up at your office or place of work and do the job for £170, saves all the "pain" of pulling the cluster and posting away.....thats if you live/work in the South or anywhere near the M25, he came down to Brighton to do mine.....He also gives you a guarantee ..... I pulled the dash and read some of the previous posters info and unlike some of things on an MB it didn't seem, in my opinion, something I could do.....the £170 seems like a lot but it used to drive me mad the display not working....

 

[television]

The actual fault is a poor contact on one of the connectors and its a matter of packing out the connector with packing pieces

 

[hmang]

i know this is a bit of an old chestnut malcolm but could you elaborate a little on that.

my w210 220 cdi 2001 does this too it's very annoying and £170 sounds a lot if your fix is as simple as you make it sound.

just a thought... would it be worthwhile posting fixes for these very common faults somewhere permanent to save you explaining over and over again.

thanks phil

 

[television]

I am really waiting to get my hands on one.

There is a ribbon cable that goes to the LCD display,these become loose and make poor contact with the PCB, the remedy is to make up some wedges from plastic or push bits from an elastic band down to wedge the ribbon wires onto the PCB.

Thats all there is to it

 

[acme8850]

Hi Guys,
I wipped the old dash out today to take a look, as you say Malcolm it looks like poor contacts on the ribbon wire connections.
With the casing removed but the unit plugged back into the car fiddling with the connections I can achieve a full set of pixels, only snag is when the fiddling stops so do some of the pixels.......The fiddling takes place through a small opening at the lower edge of the unit, moving the ribbon to achieve a better contact.
The central ribbon that feeds the main central display in accessible and has a wedging catch to secure the ribbon into the socket. This is the unit that does not lose pixels.
The other 2 that feed the temp guage and clock are inaccessible and seem to be loose and in need of some of Malcolm's rubber wedging.


I could not see how to dismantle the unit further to readily access the loose ribbons to perform the wedging! There seems to be something holding the whole thing together.

Does any one understand what I am talking about, and how to further dismantle the unit to access the ribbons and sockets?

If I can further dismantle the unit I'm sure the neccesary wedging can be achieved.
Then I can do a pictorial how to fix it article along the lines of Parrrot of Dooms excellent advice threads.

Regards
Vern

 

[television]

Hi Guys,
I wipped the old dash out today to take a look, as you say Malcolm it looks like poor contacts on the ribbon wire connections.
With the casing removed but the unit plugged back into the car fiddling with the connections I can achieve a full set of pixels, only snag is when the fiddling stops so do some of the pixels.......The fiddling takes place through a small opening at the lower edge of the unit, moving the ribbon to achieve a better contact.
The central ribbon that feeds the main central display in accessible and has a wedging catch to secure the ribbon into the socket. This is the unit that does not lose pixels.
The other 2 that feed the temp guage and clock are inaccessible and seem to be loose and in need of some of Malcolm's rubber wedging.


I could not see how to dismantle the unit further to readily access the loose ribbons to perform the wedging! There seems to be something holding the whole thing together.

Does any one understand what I am talking about, and how to further dismantle the unit to access the ribbons and sockets?

If I can further dismantle the unit I'm sure the neccesary wedging can be achieved.
Then I can do a pictorial how to fix it article along the lines of Parrrot of Dooms excellent advice threads.

Regards
Vern

You may have to desolder one of the boards to get down to the next layer.

 

[Blobcat]

How to strip the dash is here http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/showthread.php?t=25872

 

[jberks]

Does any one understand what I am talking about, and how to further dismantle the unit to access the ribbons and sockets?

Regards
Vern

I understand exactly what you are saying. You got as far as I did! (above link)
It would come apart further but it looked to me like i'd need to start disconnecting the main display ribbon cable and possibly de-soldering - hence I decided to stop at that point as I didn't want to make things worse. At the time, no one offered a repair service. Had they done, I'd have sent mine off.

 

[television]

I understand exactly what you are saying. You got as far as I did! (above link)
It would come apart further but it looked to me like i'd need to start disconnecting the main display ribbon cable and possibly de-soldering - hence I decided to stop at that point as I didn't want to make things worse. At the time, no one offered a repair service. Had they done, I'd have sent mine off.

I will grab this info from another forum

 

[acme8850]

Hi,
I have read your other thread Jberks, yes it looks like we both got to exactly the same place.

Malcolm any further news on how to get to the ribbons?

Vern

 

[hmang]

once you get to the point in jberks pics
you then have to remove the fuel & temp gauge needles and the speedo and tacho needles.

first rotate the needles till you feel them come to a stop.from memory this will be around the 6 o'clock position
this will give you a marker point for when you come to refit them as these clocks don't self calibrate and if you put the needles back in the wrong position then they will read wrong.

don't panic it's not the end of the world if you do get the position wrong you just dismantle again and reposition the needle.
although if careful you should get it right first off.
you can guage your refitted needle position is correct either of 2 ways
1/ before dismantling get a straight road and note the revs at a certain speed
2/ some cars have a digital speedo function on the computer

then CAREFULLY pull the needles off.
they are just a push fit on a spindle.
BUT the spindle is very thin and can bend if you apply uneven pressure.

turn the clock assy over as per jberks pic showing the green circuit board and note several white plastic barbs just poking through.

disengage all of these from the circuit board and the assy should come apart.

BE CAREFULL when parting that you don't break or damage the ribbons especially the centre one...support the readout

once you are in there are some little spongy bits in a housing that bear against the contact areas and if you inspect them they will have become indented to the shape of the ribbon contacts these are prob the cause of the bad connection

be super careful rebuilding.
you cannot be too much of a handbag with these clocks ...they are delicate.

let us know

 

[concord]

Hi,
I have read your other thread Jberks, yes it looks like we both got to exactly the same place.

Malcolm any further news on how to get to the ribbons?

Hi all

I did mine a few days ago and managed to get all the missing pixels back. I know some of the members have managed to do it as well and save at least £150. I fixed mine in slightly a different way.

I Pulled off the cluster by using a mercedes special tool, obtained from ebay, from a guy in Germany, for 12.99. with this tool you can pull out the cluster in 10 seconds, saving a lot of work stripping under dash cover, etc.

with the cluster removed, disconnect the two connnectors from the back.
remove the front cover by undoing the catches. three on the top and two underneath.

This bit is how I did it differently. I removed all the little dash bulbs from the back, with a screw driver, truning 180 degrees,they fell out.

then I praised the pcb from the backing plate just by about 4mm or so by pulling the small plastic lugs to the back of the LCD displays together and wedged two match stickes in the gap to maintain the tiny gap.

this then allowed to insert thin layer of foam ( cut from small gloss paint roller brush!! clean ones of course) and pushed them underneath the the white plastic LCD display housing and ribbons to the LCD displays. then with a thin piece of wood jammed the foam underneath the plastic housing and over the ribons. this is to maintain a good prassure over the ribons and contacts

with the foam pieces in place, removed the match sticks and pressed the backing and PCB together untill the logs clicked into position. then put the back plate and the PCB together and clicked the catches into position. the next step was putting all the little 1.5W bulbs back in.

without putting the front cover on I checked the cluster by connecting it in the car and hey presto all the digits were working again.

It was fiddley and took me a good 4 hours as it is a bit scary not having a full instructions at hand!
Regards
Majid

 

[mercman247]

contact for trusted repairers

we use a company call cluster repairs uk for the pixel problem for the a, c, e, clk and ml classes. a guy called ethan runs it and all they the do is digital instrument clusters repairs. they are based in london and 10 miles from norwich, top bloke, very honbest been using him for 5 years and never a prob,

website clusterrepairsuk.co.uk

give hime a call on 07934345959 im sure he can sort out the problem for pennies compared to mer dealer prices.



he charges us £120 includeing vat and and return postage, mention mercman at mbc specialist cars and im sure they will do it for the same price

the system they us has nothing to do with sponges etc, they actually replace defective ribbon which is made from carbon for a copper plated one which insures a lifetime repair.

may the force be with you.

 

[merg]

pixel repaired

just got my pixels repaired on a 2000 mercedes c-class estate. all the displays had problems the temp, clock and the middle lcd. could not read either of them.

the company i used was dmcs.

http://www.digitalmileagecorrectionspecialist.co.uk/


the guy came down to my home address and spent an hour working on the car. at the end eveything works perfectly .

excellent customer service from dan. and he only charged me £130.

now i can sell my car.