svsanchez

Hello, I have a 2001 Audi A4 with a strange intermittent instrument cluster failure which also affects the center console (where the radio and other buttons are located). I have taken the car to a bosch technician and to an audi garage and nobody has seen this problem before. I had the car scanned but no fault codes related to the instrument cluster poped up. I researched on the net and found terms as cold solder joint and voltage regulator. This morning I took the car to check the voltage and it never went below 13. I took a small video of the problem hoping someone here can point me on what to do. The audi garage said I had to change the cluster and they sell it for $2,500 which is ridiculous!

Unfortunately I am new to the forum and it doesn't allow me to post links until I posted 5 messages, so I am sorry to post it this way (you will have to copy and paste this link on your browser in order to see the video):

youtube.com/watch?v=C2ukNFcD1YM

Thank you for all the help you can provide, and sorry Audi Forum to post this URL but I am really desperate as my parents leave this week for Europe and if this is something that can be repaired I would like to send the unit with them, I promise I will look for other conversations to post but I am not an expert

midrange

I did a little bit of investigating on this issue. It seems to arise a lot and i wanted to find a direct answer for you.

Many people in all types of Audi's have seemed to have this electrical issue, but more particularly owners of the Audi TT.

The symptoms the guy explained with his Audi TT are exactly the same issues you are having trouble with. Gauges with a mind of their own, some non responsive, and display dash lights flickering.

Heres what he wrote in the hopes it may be an easy cheaper fix than replacing your cluster pod.
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I stripped my pod yet again and inspected the quality of the circuit board manufacturing under a microscope
, this appeared to be quite good with no indications of solder problems (dry joints etc).
I then traced the exact componant responsible for the failures by powering up the pod on the bench and applying an electronics grade freezer spray to all componants in turn until.....BINGO.
When i found the culprit i repeated the above many times over a period of days and the only thing that would cause the pod to fail was a couple of drops of freezer spray to the body of the culprit.
I am 100% happy that the chip that is causing the failure is the Motorola MC68HC908AZ60 chip. After looking at the signals to and from the chip i could see that this chip is responsible for driving all gauges, dials and lamps, and when cold the running software keeps continuously resetting the chip (hence the flickering).
The cost of the chip is about £10 but unfortunately requires programming by Magnetti Marelli, as the code is read protected.
Conclusions:-

1) After complete stripdown, the pod still works (on a warm day!!).
2) The problem is a definate design fault and could possibly be solved with just a reprogram and or a new chip
at a very low cost. If i had the code i could replace the chip in about 15mins.
3) The build quality of the Dashpod appears quite good (suprisingly).
4) I am planning letters to both Marelli and Audi stating the above.
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I guess what would be a good question is have you had any drastic temperature changes in the last little while? Please note that this is information to which i found and may not be the direct issue resulting to your problem.. What I did find out is that chip is very touchy when comes to progamming which is why the usual fix for this issue is to just replace the entire cluster... (if that chip is whats in your pod)

svsanchez

Hello Midrange, thank you very much for your reply. I also read about many clusters failing in cold temperature and then working normally after some minutes of driving or in warmer weather. However I'm pretty sure this won't be the issue here since:

a) I live in Guatemala and the weather is never cold here
b) The problem persists no matter how long I drive the car

Could you please send me the link to this persons's post so I can check his car's "symptoms"?

tomoxm

hello all,

anyone found a solution for this issue ? I have same problem, i live in europe -> slovakia, in warm weather it works OK

thanks.