Last year my lovely wife @Tracie managed to drop something heavy onto the top of my large format printer and damaged the motherboard.
Rang my engineer and was told that these are irreparable
The cost of a new motherboard was £10,000
Luckily I was told to take out the board and go to an old electrical shop in Sheffield. When I walked in I was shocked at just how much stuff was in there for repair, things that generally would be thrown out.
The owner was a great chap and invited me to go through into his workshop. He had more staff there along with plenty of benches with arrays of equipment.
Anyway he said come back in an hour. Hour later I returned to a fixed motherboard. Cost of the repair was £50.
I’m not saying this company could fix these but if anyone wants to send me an untouched damaged one I will take it to them to try.
Then again @stevie, if @■■■■ can and has repaired these your guy could be a back up, just saying, its not like anyone else has been able to repair these. Exciting times ahead I think.
I just wanted to warn you all about a potential problem that you may have with these displays if you are buying a second hand replacement. You must use a display with exactly the same part number. The display box contains 2 boards. One is the display board and the other is the display interface with the controller. There are 2 types of interface board and they are not interchangeable with different controllers. I have just finished repairing a unit for Pete (snoop_doggy). He had mixed the wrong units and the results were quite catastrophic with more than 3 hours of work to not only replace the burnt out components but also repair the badly burnt board. You have been warned.
Sorry about that Enda, I keep assuming that everybody knows all about these things when I shouldn’t. The climate control system comprises of 2 boxes. Box one is the display that you can see in the dashboard. Just underneath the display box (behind the dash), is the control box for the display (as pointed out by Robbie). Each box has its own part number printed onto it and if you wish to change either box, you must change it for a box with the same part number. All of the plugs are the same so it would be easy to plug in the wrong box if you don’t check the numbers.The first you will know about the problem is when the smoke starts coming from the display. I hope this helps.
Good info Joe will check the parts l have, so you are saying there is more than one type of system for the earlier display? ( how many types?)
Also for the later type l understood the display and controller are one unit?
Cheers mate.
Heres where it gets a bit confusing Jerry. I have only worked on MK1 and MK2 cars. They both have the same set up with display box and controller box. I have never seen the display and controller box in one. I did read Robs comments on this subject and if you need more info on that type, it will need to come from him. If you have a MK1 or MK2, I only know of 2 types of display and they each have a controller which is matched to them. One display which is fitted to the early cars, is a darker orange type and the other is brighter and more colourful. There is a possibility that you can’t interchange either into a car which originally had the other type but I haven’t had the time to check this for myself. It’s better to be safe by just fitting like for like.
Just thought I would mention that I recently changed the screen in mine and you mention one being the orange display and the other one more colourful i believe it’s the glass that changes the colour as I fitted it and had the orange display and then removed the glass part in front of the screen and swapped it and changed to the more colourfull one
Thanks for the confirmation. I was already sure of the reason the display looks different but I know with absolute certainty that the electronics inside are also different with the different part numbers. Not sure if it’s worth taking the gamble by mixing them up. I wouldn’t want to have to pay someone for a replacement display if it went up in smoke because I told them to mix part numbers. At least we now know to just remove the filter if you want the brighter display. Good job
I change mine to the later coloured display from the earlier orange one and didn’t replace the control box side and worked fine as wasn’t aware there was any reason it wouldn’t work at the time and only realised about the screen as the later one I bought had broken mounting lugs so used the parts from the new one and just put them in my original housing that wasn’t damaged the only difference was the original had a slider/switch which think changes the temp in Japan apparently but can’t confirm this
Really strange. Seems like I am getting egg on my face here. It still remains that the board inside has different connections and some go up in smoke if you swap them. Maybe some models have a wiring loom that will work either display. I don’t know if Rob can shed any light on this. If you choose to swap units with different part numbers, that’s up to you and I hope it works but I wouldn’t do it myself until I find out why some go up in smoke and others don’t. Thanks for the info anyway, I will certainly be looking into this a bit further.
I wasn’t trying to say your wrong or prove that in any way mate was just sharing my own experience Incase it can maybe shed some more light on what seems to be a very common problem with our cars
