Problem with Mileage display LCD
 

My A8 has not had much use this month, and has covered less than 200 miles since mid July.

Using the car today, I have spotted that in the top left corner of the mileage LCD display it looks like something is breaking down. I can see the backlight coming through in the top left, and what seems like a weird spider effect. around the edge outside the display pixel area, below this the display is fine and indicates mileage etc. perfectly normally.

I hope it does not spread, although I guess it will and eventually the whole cluster will need to be replaced.

Anyone seen this before, I wonder how fast it will spread before the LCD becomes useless.

Car is 200 miles short of 180,000 miles if that makes any difference.

The clusters have been known to fail. Not seen one personally, but sounds like it's on its way out. Just need to see how long it lasts.

You may be able to replace just that small 'display' from donor cluster. Cluster is easy to disassemble. You just need someone who can solder.

For instance, replacing center display in cluster is a common procedure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7-LXtVv_nA

You may need to pay a few pounds for that...

Well the breaking down LCD is certainly creeping. Used my A8 today for the first time in 2 weeks, and noticed it has spread. I'll attach a picture shortly or whats going on.

Attached to this post is picture of the current state of the LCD, if you look up at the display from a lower angle you can see the creep along the top of the LCD. I guess the only long term solution will be an LCD replacement or cluster.

The problem continues to get worse, the creeping on the second inner most end has worsened dramatically recently and is now heading down towards the hundreds of miles on the trip indicator.

Quick update to this thread.

I am going to have to do something to resolve this problem soon, since it continues to get worse and not the creeping has made it half way down where the thousands of miles would be on the trip computer display, I guess its only a matter of time until it hits the main mileage counter.

Has anyone ever taken a facelift cluster apart to see how the LCD screen is attached to the main circuit board. The display is different to the pre facelift in that the facelift has a dot matrix type display.

I am looking at the possibility of using a donor cluster to swap just the mileage display LCD over, since it seems getting the immo sorted along with mileage by swapping the whole cluster seems difficult/impossible outside the dealer network.

I looked at this years ago. The cluster is a bit of a pig to get apart, starting with pursuading your needles to pull off without breaking (I failed at that step). Inside everythings very tightly soldered and access to the LCD is reserved for those who thinking nothing of soldering under a magnifying glass.

bba reman are the people widely noted for providing a repair service on these things although I have no personal experience of them, their costs of a £100 or so seem very reasonable.

I've sent a few item to BBA Reman, some they have managed to fix other they didn't. I would think that a dashboard repair should be straight forward for them.


A quick check on the BBA Reman website shows they do repair the A8 dash

They do repair the A8 dash, but sadly when I contacted them about this before they cannot get the displays for the facelift cluster. Seems spares for this cluster are not available, and digging around on google I am coming to the same conclusion.

I may well have to take the plunge and buy a cheap donor cluster to dismantle to see what's what inside.

The picture below is how the display is now, with the damage just touching on the 8 in the 00's of miles on the trip. I know its going to get a lot worse since it shows no signs of stopping yet, and car has hardly covered any miles since this showed up.