i'm driving along, dashboard goes out. speedometer, tach, odo, fuel, temp gauges not working and check engine light came on. dashboard fuse still intact. turn signals still work, climate controls still work except the display went dimmer. tried disconnecting the battery but that didn't fix it. any ideas? '00 a4 quattro avant. thanks

 

you said the fuse was still in tact, did you look it over and try using a different fuse temporarily in its place to make sure that wasn't the problem?

 

just tried that: swapping out fuses. didn't work. my tach is stuck on 2k and my speed is stuck on 40mph. even though the car is in park and off

 

that sux, i personally don't know enough about these things to help any further, i thought i read somewhere some of our cars are prone to gauge/dash problems.

until someone else has some more information id try doing some forum searches/maybe even Google searches to get some ideas.

 

sounds like your car is dreaming of going 40 mph lol

ummm not 100% for an 200 audi a4 i had a gauge cluster go out on a 2001 vw passt and it was the actual cluster that was bad just replaced the cluster and installed a new fuse for kicks and giggles and holy smokes batman it was good to go. amd had to clear faults for the cluster malfunction.

 

that's what i was thinking, you prolly have to replace the cluster.
bad news is form ad ealer, its $1000 part.
worse news is you cant pluck one from a junk yard because of some memory issue.

 

thats convient..... NOT, damn that really sucks. thats a real teeth grinder one of those things where you want to find you designed that cluster and designed it wrong and punch that guy in the mouth. haha

well.. the question is.. how much do you love your audi?? and i mean think about it.. it can be used to your advantage!!

officer: " sir you know how fast you were traveling"
you:yea! 40 mph>. SEE!! its still telling me! look ( point at cluster) see my car kept it there for you."

 

good news is, if you have an ipod touch/iphone or a nice touchscreen android phone, there are many very decent apps for speed that u can you temporarily.

if you wanna spend some good money for a full gauge cluster reading, there's a link on this forum(right hand side) for the OT-2 which plugs into your car and gives you a lot of details including RPMs and speedometer.

also, keep in mind, if you replace that cluster. there pretty much a 99.9% chance you'll never have gauge problems again =P

 

well, i replaced the cluster and it seems to have solved the problems. apparently the check engine light automatically comes on if the cluster malfunctions. i found a used cluster for $200. a brand new one, though a buddy mechanic of mine, was gonna be $700. the downside is that the lcd screen in the replacement cluster is not working. so basically i got only part of my cluster to be functioning again.

another weird result is now the odometer is reading what its previous car had, not my car. apparently in older audis, the odo data is stored in the cluster memory. newer audis store the odo data in central memory and feeds that data to the cluster which makes a lot more sense to me. who would've thought that rolling back an odometer could be so easy?

 

LOL ILLEGAL!!!
hahaha