Dead Cluster

[Johnalfred]

My battery wouldn’t hold a charge so I changed it for a new one. A day or two later my instrument cluster was completely dead. I read the threads on this forum and removed the cluster hoping that it would reset after reconnecting but nothing. I sent it off to AC tropics via my local garage and £78 later plus the £11 to send it, I got it back with a note saying no faults found! I plugged it back in and it burst into life. So the moral of the story is these clusters do come back to life. Maybe AC tropics applying power to it to test it was enough to reset it? Hope this helps anyone with similar problems. This is a 2007 E280.

 

[mattkh]

My battery wouldn’t hold a charge so I changed it for a new one. A day or two later my instrument cluster was completely dead.

At this point was the battery fully charged..? Did you check the voltage with a meter.?

 

[Johnalfred]

My battery wouldn’t hold a charge so I changed it for a new one. A day or two later my instrument cluster was completely dead. I read the threads on this forum and removed the cluster hoping that it would reset after reconnecting but nothing. I sent it off to AC tropics via my local garage and £78 later plus the £11 to send it, I got it back with a note saying no faults found! I plugged it back in and it burst into life. So the moral of the story is these clusters do come back to life. Maybe AC tropics applying power to it to test it was enough to reset it? Hope this helps anyone with similar problems. This is a 2007 E280.

Should be AC tronics! Didn’t notice spell checker!

 

[FiveAlive]

Sometimes just unplugging an electrical component and plugging it in again makes it work - usually suggests that the connector had suffered a bit of corrosion, and unplugging and replugging has scraped some of the corrosion from the contact surfaces. For an electronic component that has suffered a glitch it is possible that just having the power removed for a while will allow it to 'reboot' properly when the power is reconnected; electronics usually involve capacitors and it takes time for these to discharge after the power is disconnected.

So before sending something off for investigation or looking for a replacement it is always worth disconnecting it, checking the connector for signs of corrosion, having a cup of tea (if the item contains electronics) and then reconnecting it to see if the fault has gone away. But bear in mind that faults that go away by themselves are also able to come back by themselves.