chris87944

Hi All,

I recently had some work done (Power steering pump and rack) to my '07 Boxster at the local dealership. It was there for a little over 3 weeks as some of the parts had to ship from Germany. Upon picking up the car, I noticed a strange thin yellow pattern on my central speedometer LCD (under the tach): I've attached a photo. I asked the service rep if the instrument cluster had been removed to do any of the work, thinking that perhaps the tech accidentally bumped it while in there, and he indicated no. Basically, it seems like my LCD screen just randomly failed. It's been fairly cold (but not extremely cold) out here in NY recently, and I'm wondering if the screen effectively froze. I keep the car garaged, but it's really not much warmer in my garage than outside. Has anyone else seen this happen? So far, the artifiact has not disapeared after driving for few hours today.





Anyway, the artifact does somewhat impair my ability to see the digital speedometer, so I'm hoping my extended warranty will cover fixing it. Has anyone had luck with that? If not, does anyone know how much a replacement instrument cluster is? Auto Atlanta has some listed for $3,000... ouch. According to the dealer, the instrument panel is a single unit, and the individual LCD screens are not available separately from Porsche (although I wonder if a VDO shop could service it). I guess another alternative would be a used instrument cluster (I've seen some on Ebay for $300)... is the odometer mileage stored in the cluster itself?

While it's really not a big deal, I'm finding the deffect rather annoying... perhaps because it's sitting there right in front of my at all times when driiving.


Thanks!

Spokayman

I have the same problem on an '01 996, only it is worse. I am just living with it and after a year with the car, I don't really notice it until I stop and think about it.

There are a few threads around the forum that deals with this problem. I think I found them on the 996 or Boxster forum.
I believe there are a couple of places in the US that can repair these. IIRC, they take your cluster and replace the LCD module with a different one (perhaps from a donor cluster). When I priced out this repair with one place, I remember $300-$400 being the range.

chris87944

Thanks for the info! I also came across this thread on Planet 9 where a similar problem was reported:
http://www.planet-9.com/987-cayman-b...ent-panel.html
His issue went away on it's own in 2 months. My plan at this point is to wait a while and see if my issue also self corrects (suspected moisture in display). If not, I'll try the warranty. If all else fails, I'll look into the repair shops you mentioned.

Thanks again.

chris87944

I forgot to update this thread: after the warmer spring weather came,
sometime around April, the problem corrected itself completely. At this
point I'm assuming it was some condensation in the screen that evaporated
with the warmer weather.


Chris