W/S210 Pixel fix

[W210Virgin]

I managed to get an hour on Sunday morning to tackle the wonky pixels on my dash display. There are plenty of Youtube videos about that detail what and how to do it. However they all seem to miss a few relevant points that might be of help to someone as I found out the hard way.

• I made removal tools with bent wire coat hangers. These work fine but if you form a 'handle' you will need a glove to protect your hands as the pod is murder tight. Adjust the steering wheel fully out and fully down.
• You will see when the pod eventually comes out why it is tight as there are four rubber interference fit mounts that jam it in place against 4 receiving metallic spring-steel mount clips fitted inside the dash 'hole'. I intend to lube these with a bit of Vaseline before refitting to help refitting but to also aid future removal.
• When you do your fix, make sure the car electronics are 'asleep' before reconnecting or the electronics in the car will not recognise you have reconnected it. I did this by leaving the driver's door open for a while that allowed me to get in and out without waking the car by opening a door.
• Test it before you fully reassemble the pod. It doesn't need to be fully assembled for a functional test to be done.
• Make a note of where the 4 needles are pointing before you twist them off as it is tricky enough to realign them and get accurate display readings.
• With the point above in mind, I left the pod only partly installed as yesterday when driving home I noticed all 4 gauges were misreading slightly and I had to readjust when I got home. The speedo was under reading by a good 6 mph! I still need to do another little adjustment today to fine tune.
• When taking the pod apart, there are 2 little display covers (for warning lights), extreme bottom left and right corners, that will fall out and can really only be reinstalled properly during the final snapping together of the rear cover. There are tiny locating pins but they aren't much cop TBH and a bit of tinkering will be required to align them first before snapping the back cover in place. Only this morning did I notice a tiny amount of clear bulb light sneaking thro' when the main beam 'blue' was lit.
• Replace your bulbs. I haven't got mine yet as I was more concerned with fixing the pixels but I intend to change the lot as a few are blown.

That might be of some help.

 

[markmifsud]

I have done a few of these pixel repairs now and tbh, the hardest part is getting those damn corner warning light panels in place.