It was a nice 6 month stretch there with zero issues. I fired up the car yesterday and the LCD panel on the gauge cluster was quite a bit dimmer than normal. Weird. No other issues, car is tip top otherwise with 71k on the clock. A few minutes down the road I am making a left turn and it goes completely dark. Car has been power cycled 6 more times since both hot and cold and it is till dark. Sounds like I have a fun project in my future. Any tips or advice from people who have swapped gauge clusters before on a turbo or perhaps there is a fix that I do not know about? Thanks, guys!

 

Search Ebay. There are guys that replace the LCD. I tried fixing one myself on an Audi, and it is really not a DIY.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PORSCHE-CAY...frcectupt=true

 

Depending on how, emm, "electrically inclined" you are there are some DIY videos, just search for "cayenne lcd replacement" and you'll see a handful like this one:


However, I'd suggest you do a bit more troubleshooting in your case - shine a powerful flashlight at the LCD and see if anything shows up with the car on, like the PRND and so on. It could be that your backlighting died and NOT your LCD panel, and it looks to me from the videos like the actual LCD and backlighting are separate things. Don't know for sure, just my observation.

Don't forget NOT to touch the black printed sheet with number and letter if you dive in there, as apparently fingerprints are very difficult to get off. Or, you could always pay for professional repair job.

 

I have multiple engineering degrees, one of which is an EE and a fairly well equipped electronics lab in my house. Looks like they are pretty easy to work on, so I will open her up and see if I can repair it before ordering parts. It is always that calculation of time(labor x car being down) + money + frustration

 

That video is for a Non Turbo cluster. I had this problem on my first 05 Turbo and it required replacing/resoldering a transformer on the back of the cluster. The transformers were brown/orange and if I remember right it was the top one (there were two on the cluster). I had to buy the transformer off eBay and only a chinese company sold them at the time (4ish years ago).

Also, based on memory I couldn't really find lots of info on the Turbo cluster backlight repair but I found it on a Touareg forum. At some point the touareg's had the same color LCD that the 955 Turbos have.

 

Thanks for the info, guys. It appears these transformers are notorious for failing in Mercedes (mercedi? haha) as well. I ordered two of them and will replace both so that I hopefully only have to do this project one time. I found a supplier in the US, so should have them in by next weekend. I did see some others' findings that there are a few additional components on the board that may fail in conjunction at times. I will take some pictures for the next person coming in after me.

 

Could you post where you found the parts and the part/model numbers?

 

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...e+lcd&_sacat=0

 

Most likely it is not the lcd that died, but a small transformer that is used when you control brightness.
I just posted a diy on this from a different forum, where I show how to fix this. Good luck.
fixing lcd brightness diy

 

Wow, your timing could not have been better. What a fantastic write up! It is certainly better than I would have done. Thank you very much for this contribution. How long should I expect all these steps to take me from start to finish? Definitely looks like a few hours at least.

 

The parts arrived today from this ebay seller:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/2PCS-VW-Tou...72.m2749.l2649

They were packaged very well and I don't think anyone is going to beat the price of 2 for $39 shipped and delivered in 3 days! Very glad I went this route.

When I have the time this weekend, I am going to use ciaka's fantastic DIY writeup for this project:
https://rennlist.com/forums/cayenne-...ss-repair.html

I will post back with my results for others who encounter this issue.

 

Small update. The gauge cluster panel has returned to normal operation on its own. Out of curiosity I am going to see how long it lasts before digging in and replacing the transformers. I am sure the project will happen in a matter of days, weeks, or months.