ToolPants et al - Hybrid S/Non-S Instrument Cluster Question?

[rrotondo]

Long story short:

I need to replace my instrument cluster in a 2000S. The center LED has gotten unreadable. I have located a 2000 NON-S cluster with good LEDs.

Question:

Can I take the Back Section of the NON-S instrument Cluster (has the circuit board and LEDs) and Mate it to the front section of My S version (sliver face gages and trim rings). Both are for manual tranny and I have the computer option.

Could this possibly work? Any Gotchas.

Many thanks for any help anyone can give on this subject!!!!

[Tool Pants]

I don't see why this would not work, but I do not know anyone who has done it. When I was trying to do the 986/996 cluster swap I took my Boxster circuit board out and put it in the 996 cluster.

In this picture the green circuit board is still attached to the back of the cluster housing, but it is easy to remove the circuit board from the housing and swap it into another cluster. The picture is a 996 cluster but the Boxster is the same except for the 2 additional gauges.

The only thing is the mileage. After the swap when you plug in the hybrid cluster you will see the mileage from the donor non S cluster. Also, the donor has to be from a 1997-2000.

[Paul Fraser]

So those individual LCD units can't be swapped? It has the be the whole board or nothing? I'm asking because of your problem, TP. If you find a unit with 2 out of 3 LCDs ok, you can't take one of them to sort your 5 dial Ebay cluster?

[Tool Pants]

I think the LCD displays can be swapped. I had considered taking my good middle display out of the Boxster cluster and putting it in the 996 cluster to replace it's bad middle display. But the display is connected to the circuit board with what I think is called ribbon wire. The ribbon wire is the tan things in the picture that connect the displays electrically to the circuit board.

In post #2 I said it was easy to remove the circuit board from the back of the instrument cluster. In the current picture you can see the removed circuit board sitting on what looks like a telephone book. The "book" is the Porsche price list in paper form that we used back then.

I was not brave/stupid enough to unsolder the ribbon wire from my good Boxster cluster to see if I could solder it to the 996 circuit board. I can solder, but all those little solder joints for the ribbon wire in the circuit board looked too much for me. I did not want to end up with 2 screwed up clusters.

[Paul Fraser]

I think that was a smart choice. It's one thing experimenting with two duff clusters but I wouldn't have used my original either -- even if I was really good at electrical soldering. Nice to know that you can possibly turn two broken clusters into one serviceable one though.