Actually it's pretty simple:

- China clone: 1 year warranty

- OEM VDO: 5 year warranty

And I'd hardly call 12 years and 226k miles "premature". At that age, I expect all kinds of things to need replacing.

 

I tried laying a piece down between the LCD and back light and if it's not perfectly flat coming from a roll of tint, you will get reflections at certain angles when the sun shines on it. Tried it, didn't like it. I guess I'm more **** than you

If you've had a perfectly working LCD for 12 years then you are one of the lucky ones. My car when I bought it had 60000 miles and the LCD was hooched. How long ago did it start failing one pixel line at a time? Who knows. All I'm saying is the OEM LCDs fail early. I would hardly say the LCD is a "maintenance" item that you can get serviced at the dealership. They would tell you to replace the cluster to fix it.

Doug

 

At 12+ years and 226k miles, everything is a maintenance item. Body panels, instrument clusters, even the driver's seat upholstery (you should see mine, it's torn in multiple places).

As for the stealership, they can lick my sack. The replacement cluster they sell me (and then charge me to reprogram) would have the same new VDO LCD, and it would cost $1000+ for the whole job. The cost difference between a rebuild with a Chinese clone or a VDO LCD is about $90 ($140 vs $229). And as I stated above:

- China clone: 1 year warranty

- OEM VDO: 5 year warranty

For 4 extra years of warranty and a matching appearance without need of any tint film, I'll cough up the extra $90 without complaint.

 

True, that's why I took it all apart, yet again, to glue a small piece of clear plastic across the tint film.

I had tha cluster apart 4 times before I had the right (35%) tint and the plastic piece to keep the roll from hitting the LCD.

All in all, I wish I'd bought the VDO so I didn't have to go through all of that. The soldering pads are pretty sucky on the Chinese ones too. Soesn't take much dwell time before they start sliding around on you.

 

Got my gauge cluster back with a brand new VDO gen 2 LCD installed. Looks fantastic, perfect match to the rest of the displays, way better than the cheap Chinese one I had put into my wife's A6. Definitely worth the extra money in my opinion.