Digital display fade W203

[greenacres2]

2002 C230 K, W203 chassis--digital display is fine and bright (with no missing pixels even!!) for the first 45 to 60 minutes of driving, then begins to fade from the top and bottom toward the center, jsut about disappears after 2 hours of driving. Once the vehicle sits for an hour--display is vibrant again. My guess is that it's heat related--would be interesting to see what happens when we're running AC in the warm month (or 5 weeks) of the year.

Is it possible to just swap the display unit out of the cluster? From the threads i've seen on here, sounds almost like the digital display may be where the memory (odometer, service, etc) may be stored and so if a swap is made a dealer would need to document it. If that's the case--seems like it would have made more sense to house the memory elsewhere so the display could be treated more like a computer monitor--just a visualization of the brain.

If not an easy swap, and if my guess on heat build-up is right--anybody have any thoughts on a way to mount and power a small (very small) cooling fan on the back of the cluster??

Good to be back on the Forums--and out in my garage!!

[mbzman]

I have seen lots of faulty displays on W210s and W203s. I think it is a fairly common fault. I wonder if these clusters are still made by VDO? I know North Hollywood Speedometers does service VDO products and they might be a good source to contact.

[greenacres2]

Yep, it's embossed with VDO across the bottom of the digital housing. Thanks for the heads-up, I may contact North American at some point. It doesn't get really faint until almost 2 hours, and at my age i can't drive much longer than that anyway!!

If i could determine that the digital display is only a display (which North American may be able to tell us) i'd be willing to buy a cluster just to get that. If it stores the vehicle data onboard and requires programming to match the vehicle--what i do will depend on the costs.

EDIT--it wasn't that late and i'm pretty much always sober, no idea why i read "American" instead of "Hollywood". I'm looking at their web site now--instead of "Speedo"!!

Thanks again!!

[greenacres2]

Couldn't tell much from North Hollywood web site, and wasn't ready to waste their time with a phone call at this point so i did a little web searching. Given the menu of common repairs on the link below i think i may not be the first to notice this....

http://www.dnaspeedometers.com/mbz.htm

Next long drive we take, i'll kick on the AC once the dimming starts--that may tell us that shielding from the heat duct might cure enough to make it a tolerable issue. Otherwise--i'm down for a week to send out for repair.

[iwrock]

You can purchase the LCD Display seperately from the cluster...


If you can pull the cluster out, its fairly easy to replace the screen. I did it on a friends C32 in less than an hour!

[greenacres2]

That's the answer i'm looking for. Seemed like it should just be a display, not where any data is retained. If that's correct--i'll try it. Haven't pulled the cluster on this car yet, but my old 560 was very easy to work with. Thanks for the info.