Mitch

I recently took my 97 A6 in because the chime no longer functioned e.g. when I left my lights on. I was told that it would cost $1051 to fix this, as the entire instrument cluster needed to be replaced in order to effect the repair. What engineer thought up this? A grand for a dinger?

mikef4.2

Most chimes that I have seen are plug in. Look just like a relay. Maybe I will go look. Of course your car is different series than mine. $1050, wow!

Audiablo

Wow, and I thought $168 for a headlight switch on my XR-7 was bad...

DWC_2.7T

Must be the same guy who designed the 80's Rabbit instruments; had to replace the whole printed circuit board in the gauge panel to fix a faulty and obnoxious oil warning buzzer.

marcos

Nope, it's soldered to the instrument printed circuit board. I deactivated my chime a long time ago, since I found it annoying (I apparently do a lot of stuff in the wrong order, such as starting the car before putting my seabelt on or taking the key out of the ignition before turning the lights off). If you are interested I can email you the instructions on how to take the instrument panel aparts, it's pretty easy (maybe an hour and a half including reinstall). I don't know enough about the circuitry to guess whether it's something that you'd be able to repair, if it's just the speaker it would be easy to replace.

On two of my previous cars, a 1986 Audi 4000Q and a 1997 BMW 528i, it was indeed a separate relay like thingy which just pulled out. On my current cars, a 2000 A6 and a 2001 330i it's soldered on the PCB, presumably a cost savings move.

marcos

Jim Stoner

I just went thru this on a 1998 A6 Avant. $632 for the part and 1/2 hour labor to replace it. Why are they going to charge you over $1000? Very poor design if a drained battery will blow out the instrument cluster!!!