[spannerrash]

So, after contacting multiple cluster, ecu, general electronics repair companies it's looking a bit grim for the centre (color) display. None that replied, 4 of them, can source a spare part. All indicating a lack of demand / rarity. I suspect they will all be sourcing from the same suppliers, Chinese probably, so it looks like they just don't exist. Yet anyhow.

I did get one interesting reply though offering something I didn't think was possible.
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"Hi Frank,

We are unable to source the LCD, however we can source a donor unit and transfer the data across.

If you wish to proceed with this, please provide the part number for the instrument cluster."
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For clarification I sent the below reply.
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" Hi, thank you for your reply.*


When you say you can transfer all the data across to another unit do you mean for the immobiliser and also the millage? My car is a relatively low mileage example and I can't afford to have any mileage discrepancies. It would adversely affect the value of the car."
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And their reply
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" Hi Frank,

​All data in the original unit is transferred to the donor unit."
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I'll cut a very long story short here. When I bought my car 4 years or so ago it came with a butchered cluster. In order to hide an ABS fault someone had prised out the led. I had the cluster fixed but was left with a parasitic drain. The battery would go flat within days. The pcb in the cluster was damaged.

After months of research I could find NO 100% guaranteed way of swapping the cluster and maintaining the correct mileage reading. In the end I resorted to getting a local electronics repair company to swap the immo / millage chips from my cluster to a spare I had bought. All worked perfectly and now no parasitic drain. Well, all was perfect until the first winter came around and I found that the spare cluster has a faulty screen.

Now I know this can be done on plenty of other clusters but I thought the Audi's of this era were heavily encrypted and so made it almost impossible to use a second hand unit and correct the millage to that of your original.

So, back to the point, is it possible for a professional company to clone the cluster? It really is a high risk strategy if they screw it up.