krazymaan

I have the typical pixilated readout on my instrument cluster. I bought one from ebay but it was wrong. there seems to be at least two different ones for the 2001 allroad from what i gathered. I installed it and wasn't right. The one I bought had the ribbon coming in the center left of the read out. The other one the ribbon comes in the bottom left. If your on ebay and you click the stuff about check to see if fits your vehicle. Its strange that they all advertise it will fit the C5 / allroad but when you check the fitment buttons it says will not work with your allroad. So i went through until one of them said it fits my allroad. Well, it didn't. The sellers aren't smart enough to know why either, I asked them. When i watch some youtube videos everyone seems to be using the screen with the ribbon entering the bottom left and there is just a twist in it because ideally the readout with the center ribbon is a perfect alignment, which i know is irrelivent. So while being very careful. my soldering iron burnt two led bulbs that were at the 6 and 7k position on the tach so i removed them. Then of course the left through the face push rod had to snap off for some reason. So i just unsoldered the readout, soldered on two new led lights at 6 and 7 tach position and my dash is fine, the center readout is just a solid now. looks better than dancing pixels.
So I picked up another cluster to get the left push rod out of it, I haven't plugged it in to see if the pixels are good or bad.
But I had a thought after reading about all the stuff you need to go through to change out an instrument panel with an immobilizer in it. How come people aren't just unsoldering the immobilizer from their old instrument panel and soldering it into the new instrument panel. Seems that would save a lot of headaches and nightmares for some.
Second, exactly where is the immobilizer? like what does it look like, a pink diode? a square green thing? a blue thing on two legs behind the speedo? So much talk about this little fellow and not a single photo of it on the great internet.

krazymaan

Am I post g in the wrong area?
Nobody has a suggestion or answer

4xaudi

The immobilizer is coded between the key the ecu and the cluster. they all have to be coded together.

krazymaan

I understand all of that. Thats the easy part. My question is why can't i take out my original cluster immobilizer and swap it over to my new dash cluster? This way wouldn't they all still be coded the same and you wouldn't have to worry about vag and coding. Second question was what does the cluster immobilizer look like and where is it located.

4xaudi

I am pretty sure its part of the electronics on the circuit card, not a standalone part

krazymaan

Somewhere on the line I would have to think it was a part that was soldered onto the board like all the other parts.

krazymaan

Well who ever the hell told me come to this site because there are a lot of helpful people on this subject is a dumb ***. Hard to imagine my very first question on this site is so extremely complicated that nobody can even begin to answer. crazy. Off to the other audi site for an answer.

Boston Driver

You'd be better off sending your original cluster to replace the center display. Check out BBA Reman. They do great work (although they don't list the A6 anymore, I think they still do it).
Immobilizer is not an easy thing to take care of yourself, unless you have the right tools (VAG COM) plus the car's original secret key code (SKC), which is very uncommon. It's even a PITA to replace keys, let alone the instrument cluster.

Anyway, give BBA Reman a shot. Home (US) | BBA Reman
I've been to their shop in Taunton MA. Good people. Great work! Your car will be unable to drive while it is out. No idea the cost...

krazymaan

You are correct. It's only like 100 bux or so.

Boston Driver

That's not too bad, thought it would be more. I've seen a cluster display repair done on an A6 (another local owner), and his only comment was that the red was a bit brighter than the original, but it looked great. I think you can FedEx the cluster back and forth, adds cost but reduces down time. Not sure how long they need it to actually do the repair. Might want to ask them that as well.

As far as the immobilizer itself, I only know what the little chip looks like in the key fob. Looks like a tiny little silver cylinder


Not sure what is in the cluster itself. I think the ECU is part of the immobilizer string as well (EPROM chip?). But, I'm not going to recommend you play with any of those.

Good luck!