Repair MID with dead pixels?

Unhelpfully, my experience was that no-one can repair, good second hand ones are very rare, so off to BM with cheque book open, which was what I did.

Mine was completely illegible apart from the time, so if yours is only missing a few pixels I'd say it was wearing well!

There is one for sale on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BMW-840-…10374QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

£414!!! I think I paid about £235 for mine.

Zitat von Cavey

£414!!! I think I paid about £235 for mine.

Not sure where the £414 comes from, the buy it now price is £270.
There's a chap that advertises on ebay.de - search for "pixelarzt" (which translates as pixel doctor) - he regularly holds an auction to buy a repair ticket - I think he charges around EUR 60 to repair the MID and he has good feedback. Occasionaly he has a computer for sale - I won his ebay auction for one last weekend at a price of EUR 151 - the article description says that the unit has a new display. Once it arrives I'll post feedback on how it is, meanwhile I'll see if I can find the ebay posting for Pixelarzt and link it here

Stop Press - here's a link to Pixelarzt's ebay auction posting

URL pixelarzt /[url][url]

PPS - shout if you need any help translating German

OBC pixels

Hi guys,

My OBC needs attention. I emailed the pixelartz guy asking if he speaks English. Holger, I believe that's his name, did reply but his English is as sketchy as my German!
Like someone's already said, seems to get good feedback so I'm going to risk sending mine to him. The question I want to ask you lot is "is the inspection info held on the OBC or elsewhere? Will I still get my inspection reminders correctly if the OBC has been out the car for awhile getting fixed?"
By the way. If Theo from Oz is reading this, can you drop me a line. Long time no speak... itinspain@yahoo.co.uk.

Cheers,

There were some postings on RoadFly with some step-by-step guides for a DIY repair. The problem is caused by bad design, which is surprising that even upto 2001 cars, BMW haven't learned from their mistakes. In fact miost of these devices are made by VDO-Siemens and even many Mercedes and others have similar problems.

The LCD display has a flexible, printed-circuit 'ribbon cable', the other end of which connects to the circuit-board. But instead of using a proper connector, the contact is made using an adhesive strip and some foam backing to apply some pressure. This, of course, deteriorates with time making the contacts intermittent and therby losing colums or pixels from the display. Most fixes involve re-packing the rear of this contact-area to restore the contact pressure.

I would not buy a used one, as all develop the same problems in time. In many cases, the problem is intermittent and varies according to temperature, humidity and seems to be better if the car is used often (maybe vibration helps).

Re: OBC pixels

Zitat von IvanT

Hi guys,

My OBC needs attention. I emailed the pixelartz guy asking if he speaks English. Holger, I believe that's his name, did reply but his English is as sketchy as my German!
Like someone's already said, seems to get good feedback so I'm going to risk sending mine to him. The question I want to ask you lot is "is the inspection info held on the OBC or elsewhere? Will I still get my inspection reminders correctly if the OBC has been out the car for awhile getting fixed?"
By the way. If Theo from Oz is reading this, can you drop me a line. Long time no speak... itinspain@yahoo.co.uk.

Cheers,

Hi,
as far as I know, the MID is simply a display and does not store any information itself. It should therefore be OK to remove and still have the data stored - you can still drive the car without the MID in place
Cheers

I don't think that anyone on Roadfly was ultimately successful or repeatable.

My own observations were that the problem with mine was poor connections between the main ribbon cable and the boards. Bad header design?

I could take a tiny jewelers screw driver and manipulate the wire in the connection to the board and turn on that row of pixels again until shortly after releasing the pressure when they would go out again.

Then BMW intervened in my grand experiment and offered me a free MID if i gave my old one back. So I succumbed to the dark side and let them have it back.

This is for a different MID, but it kind of demonstrates the principles:

http://www.bimmerboard.com/forums/posts/285208

Hi Terry,

"Then BMW intervened in my grand experiment and offered me a free MID if i gave my old one back. So I succumbed to the dark side and let them have it back."

How did you manage that???

Ivan

There is a "silent" order from BMWNA that will replace the MID for 1/2 price or free -labor is separate. I held out and got it for free but that was 4 years ago.

I have never heard of it happening in any other country than the US.

The details are on http://www.e31faq.com

As an aside-BMWNA started this 1/2 price thing by doubling the price of the MID. Quite a bargain

I paid less than 1/2 hour labor (dealer must install is part of the deal) to the dealer and got back a hand washed and vacuumed car Of course I took the part out and handed it to the service writer while he wars leaning in the window telling me what a pain it was to get out and that they might have to charge me extra

A couple of added thoughts for the idly curious:

According to BMW of North America (BMWNA) Canada is not in North America

There is also a service bulletin from BMWNA about a courtesy replacement for US headlight adjusters which are totally different than the Euro adjusters.

This is a great deal if you pre-negotiate the replacement headlight buckets for the ones that they WILL break installing the free adjusters. About $1600 US If you do it right the new free headlights are really nice!

there was a post on the club detailing diy in french and one on roadfly for a different e, followed it twice, cleaning the connectors with no success

The piercing pins in the ribbon cable connector seemed really wimpy to me.

If I had one now I think I would have a local cable maker do up a header/ribbon cable assembly with more robust connections and solder it to the boards.

Response From BMW (UK)

Hello everyone. I just joined the club with a '97 4.4 Ci Sport which naturally enough suffers from the sick pixel syndrome in the MID. Seeing what BMWNA are doing prompted me to ring BMW customer services in the UK (01344 426565 0r 01256 747010 if you don't do 0870). Here's what they said:
"We know about the problem and are dealing with it on a customer by customer basis. Go into your local dealership and have them examine the car. Through the dealer we will then provide you some help with this."
Er, does that mean financial help, like a discount?
"Yes"
Has anyone else done this, yet?
BTW, the part number for the unit is 62136914683 and the UK retail price as of today's date is £255.32 plus VAT.

Let us know how you get on. Is there a minimum age etc. (let the flood gates open)

Just in case they decide to cover some of the cost instead of all of it, please bear in mind that there is a gentleman in Germany that fixed my MID-unit for approx 60€ including the postage...Do not accept offers that are more expensive than this.

It also seems that the OEM units (more than 15 years old actually now) will most likely have the same hidden fault so they will fail at some point.

M I plan to send mine over to Pixerl?? (something like that) in the near future. I have already had a few email conversations with him.