Display segment failures on Clock & Temp Display

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tamrsoft

Active Member
Joined
Sep 2, 2005
Messages
173
Location
Shawford, Hampshire
Car
E220 CDi (2001)
Has anyone had segment failures on the numerals for either the temperature display or the clock display. MB dealership solution is to replace whole instrument head at about £350 + VAT + Labour. Is it possible to get just the LED display panels from somewhere ?
 
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tamrsoft said:
Has anyone had segment failures on the numerals for either the temperature display or the clock display. MB dealership solution is to replace whole instrument head at about £350 + VAT + Labour. Is it possible to get just the LED display panels from somewhere ?
The lamp for the rev counter has gone on mine and the dealer has also said that the whole instrument cluster has to be replaced. They explained that the cluster does not have multiple lamps for illumination but has some sort of single light source and fibre optic setup and that part of that has broken. As the car is only 11 months old, it will done under warranty.
 
I have this problem too with the temperature display, dealer wants £700 to replace whole instrument cluster (parts and labour). I read somewhere that cleaning the electrical contacts can help, but I'm not sure I believe it. Seems to be a common problem on E series.
 
Faulty display segments

Since first reporting the problem, I have found the failing segments work intermittently. This tells me that it is not a hard failure in the LED but an intermittent connection somewhere between the logic driving the LED display and the actual display device. This could possibly be a dry joint on the component panel of the instrument cluster. If it happens on a more permanent basis, I may remove the instrument cluster and re-work the solder connections for the display device on the printed circuit card with an instrument soldering iron. This usually resolves dry joints if this is the problem.
 
On a similar note about Outside Temp Display, my temp display is going crazy (in the W210) It starts by reading -38 and then works its way slowly to about -2 and occasionally gives a correctish reading!

I'm guessing, loose connection somewhere, since the display does show all digits. Can anyone point me in some direction to look? thanks

EDIT:
Just when i keep searching, i find the answer myself in this Thread
:bannana:
 
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Probably the sensor needs replacing (pokes out through the plastic bumper trim). It should be a lot cheaper to fix than the actual display unit itself
 
I had some segments go bad on the exterior temp display recently in my 2002 CLK 55 AMG. Dealer replaced the entire cluster, apperently thay cant replace just that display.
 
tamrsoft said:
Has anyone had segment failures on the numerals for either the temperature display or the clock display. MB dealership solution is to replace whole instrument head at about £350 + VAT + Labour. Is it possible to get just the LED display panels from somewhere ?

Yep know fault on the W210, mine does this when left standing for a week or so (over xmas) I have heard condenstion build up on the connectors??

One of my mates with a W210 E280 has only a couple of segments working!

It is not the segements itself, just bad connectons.

Take the pod out and clean all connectors and that should sort it out.
 
tamrsoft said:
Has anyone had segment failures on the numerals for either the temperature display or the clock display. MB dealership solution is to replace whole instrument head at about £350 + VAT + Labour. Is it possible to get just the LED display panels from somewhere ?

try www.bba-reman.com these people do an exchange unit (recon)
 
tamrsoft said:
Has anyone had segment failures on the numerals for either the temperature display or the clock display. MB dealership solution is to replace whole instrument head at about £350 + VAT + Labour. Is it possible to get just the LED display panels from somewhere ?

I have stripped down the cluster before, but I couldnt get the needles off, and so couldnt get to the ribbon.
 
I do not believe it is the LCD display module (at least on mine) since the segments some times do display and at other times they do not. I believe the connector suggestion is a good one and possibliy accounts for the problem. I also get the same (intermittent) effect with P-D-R-4-3-2-1 display beside the clock display where one or two of the segment squares do not display sometimes.
 
Hi, New member here and hopefully I can start with some useful advice.

I had the 'faulty pixels' on my CLK ~ being both frugal and determined I decided to take the thing apart, one hour, a few (more) grey hairs and some scrap rubber later it was all fixed.

The good news is, it is just a faulty connector and you don't need to remove the needles (good job, because I don't think you can!). If there is sufficient interest I'll write it up, although looking at the obvious spread of the fault, I can't help thinking that MB shouldn't be paying me, or fixing them for us, there is no doubt it is a manufacturing fault principally caused by inferior materials.

Anyway, post back if you are interested (before I sell the fix on ebay).
 
Hi MartAD welcome to the forum!

I would love to hear a write up as I have not been able to convince myself to spend £600 on a new cluster and its bugging me having stuff not working :)
 
PeterE320Cdi said:
I would love to hear a write up as I have not been able to convince myself to spend £600 on a new cluster and its bugging me having stuff not working :)

Yep me also as mine has started plaing up again over the last few months!
 
Me too. My outside temp gauge has the same fault. :)
 
OK, I guess at least a few people have the problem, so here's what I did.

If you know how to take out the cluster, ignore my droning in the first section.

Please bear in mind this was a few days ago, I've never taken a Merc apart before, I have no idea of the intricate variations, the following worked in my car (CLK320 2001 Avantgarde), if your car blows up, if you blow up or you completely wreck your cluster, don't blame me, hunt me down or hate me.

Whip out the cluster, I'm guessing you know how, I used a coat hanger, cut it in two, bent both the ends, slipped them in behind the cluster (I hate the word binnacle, I'm sure thats what boats have) and gave the whole thing a bloody good pull, in my car there are no speedo cables or pipes, just wires, I like wires, wires are good, wires are easy.

After unplugging the two connectors (nice mechanism) the cluster was out and kitchen table bound. The perspex front is clipped on, as is the back, it's just a matter of working your way around, it's one of those annoying jobs reminiscent of taking a bike tyre off with forks, by the time you are all the way around, it's reconnected itself at the beginning. Having picked up the two coloured pieces of plastic that give the warning lights all the pretty colours up off the floor (I bet you drop them as well) the circuit board is exposed.

The rogue LEDs are fed by a ribbon cable, above that is a piece of rubber (pink coloured on mine), I assumed this was a piece of elastomer zebra first of all, but in fact is just a piece of rubber that keeps pressure on the ribbon cable, so it makes good contact with the PCB. This rubber obviously gets degraded over time and with heat, so it loses it's bounce, if you've noticed some segments light up after a long journey, that'll probably be the rubber expanding and re-attemting pressure. Anyway, to my mind it's a rubbish connection (as witnessed by its failure rate).

If you liberate the board from the white plastic slighty by pushing the adjacent (below the connection) white clips to one side, you should have enough room to see a gap between the offending rubber and the ribbon cable, try and improve upon it by pushing the rubber up slightly, I used a precision scredriver. So, now you need some more pressure, I slipped in a strip of 2mm rubber (funnily enough this was an elastomer strip from an old project), I chose rubber so I didn't put any strain on the board and rupture any joints after assembly. The 2mm was a little large in all honesty, but I didn't fancy doing this again, I get bored easily and I figured the original rubber was only going to get worse. I repeated the same on the other LED ribbon connector.

Because the rubber was a little thick, the white plastic clips had a tendency to push open up again, so I pushed some tiny white plastic wedges in the opening to stop it from happening. this is really badly explained, but I reckon it will make sense when you see it live.

As all good manuals suggest, re-assembly is a direct reversal of the dis-assembly process ... although you won't be needing the coat hangers again, use them for torturing the Parts Manager at your local Stealership, when you next pop in to scoff at his new cluster prices.

So there you have it, in essence it's the integrity of the plastic ribbon cable to PCB connection, you might have a better idea for resolving it (can't see how, mine was brilliant), but it is that connection you need to sort out.

Cash, beer or new 16" alloys gratefully accepted.
 
I took the plunge today and with help from my father in law (in fact he did nearly all of it) dismantelled my dash and added rubber strips to repair the temperature display, clock and gear selector as they have degenerated to the point of having just 1 pixel visable of the clock and only the C visable on the temperature gage.

The results are great so a BIG thank you to MartAD, everything is working and readable with just 6 squares missing from the gear selector.

It took us about 4 hours in total with a few mistakes along the way which I will detail below as it may help others who are attempting this.

We disconnected the center ribbon cable thinking we would be able to pull the casing further back from the circuit board, this gave no more space and I now have a center display which is darker on the left so I would suggest leaving this one alone and trying not to pull it too much.

We started off using foam, this improved the temp slightly but had too much give in it.

We then changed this for rubber, this worked better but was still not perfect.

Added slightly thicker rubber probley about 2mm, the white plastic clips would not close fully but the display was better.

Re-read MartAD's instructions and realised we had not made plastic wedges to keep the clips on, made some wedges out of the spare rubber and added these, the display was now perfect.

Fitted everything back together and started the car, the speedo then seemed to reset itself with the needle pointing verticle down. Tried various ways to get the speedo to reset or stop at 0.

Eventually managed to get the speedo set to zero, by letting it re-set to verticle then moving the needle ANTI-clockwise all the way around to 0.

Fitted everything back together, pushing the unit back into the dash was tough until we put some soap on the rubber pads, it then slide in perfectly.

Thanks again to MartAD for a great tip and write up, can we get a copy of it posted to the HOWTO section?

Peter.
 
Glad it worked ... someone else who PM'd me said they used an elastic band as the slither of rubber, seems to make sense, it worked apparently.
 

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