rozzaa146 Posted April 23, 2014 Report Share Posted April 23, 2014 I am currently wiring up my sub and it wasn't wired up properly so it drained the battery and now, the dials don't move and it shows error where it usually has the miles. Does anyone know how to remove this? I couldn't find it anywhere Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danoid Posted April 23, 2014 Report Share Posted April 23, 2014 Sounds ****ed to me!Take it all out, charge your battery back up and see what happens 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rozzaa146 Posted April 23, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2014 Sounds ****ed to me!Take it all out, charge your battery back up and see what happensthe car still runs fine, its just that the stereo wont come on and the dials dont work, i thought it must just be a error message that you can remove Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skezza Posted April 23, 2014 Report Share Posted April 23, 2014 Have you disconnected and reconnected your battery? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rozzaa146 Posted April 23, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2014 Have you disconnected and reconnected your battery?no, would this help fix this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skezza Posted April 23, 2014 Report Share Posted April 23, 2014 Try it and find out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rozzaa146 Posted April 23, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2014 Try it and find out.I'll give it a go tomorrow. Should I just take off the red wire? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skezza Posted April 23, 2014 Report Share Posted April 23, 2014 Good God no. Disconnect the negative terminal. Give it ten seconds then reconnect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rozzaa146 Posted April 24, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 24, 2014 Good God no. Disconnect the negative terminal. Give it ten seconds then reconnect.right, i just did that and this is what the dials are doing:I'm really worried, all that happened for this to happen was that the battery had been drained by the sub but I didn't know so I tried to start the car, it wouldn't do it even though you could hear it trying. When I turned just the electrics on, it would show error on the right hand dial and the time would restart on the left hand dial. I had to bump start it to charge the battery back up but it still showed error overnight and so now I tried disconnecting the battery and the dials look like this. The stereo comes on now but I'm really worried :'( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danoid Posted April 24, 2014 Report Share Posted April 24, 2014 (edited) It does look like your cluster is bricked to be honest.I'd disconnect the negative and leave it 10 minutes, is what I normally do as it fully clears everything.Whilst it's disconnected remove the power from your head unit from the back, then when the 10 mins is up reconnect your battery and go for a quick drive for around 1-2 miles.See if the dash is then alive, try resetting the mileage counter too Edited April 24, 2014 by danoid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skezza Posted April 24, 2014 Report Share Posted April 24, 2014 right, i just did that and this is what the dials are doing:......I'm really worried, all that happened for this to happen was that the battery had been drained by the sub but I didn't know so I tried to start the car, it wouldn't do it even though you could hear it trying. When I turned just the electrics on, it would show error on the right hand dial and the time would restart on the left hand dial. I had to bump start it to charge the battery back up but it still showed error overnight and so now I tried disconnecting the battery and the dials look like this. The stereo comes on now but I'm really worried :'(OK, firstly, calm down. The main thing is the car should still be driveable, because the immobilizer is a separate box so you won't have fried that. The cluster is an independent unit. They're not even coded to the ECU. On other VW's, the immobilizer is built-in to the cluster. If you had this issue on one of those, then I'd be worried. You should be able to start it and drive it etc, so that's the main thing (after all, it's a car, driving is it's primary function, regardless of whether the mileage is shown), however, let's work logically and see if we can sort it.Secondly, I'm going to take a punt and say draining the battery did not kill your cluster. Even starting your car with low battery shouldn't kill your cluster. I've had two Lupo's. In my first, I drained the battery by leaving the radio on, which meant when I turned the key, I had the same issue as you, the car cranked but not enough juice to start it, the cluster scrambled and went off etc. However, once reconnected to a slave battery, it came straight back and remained till the day it went. Volkswagen spend millions in research and development, imagine if everytime someone let their battery get a bit flat this happened? They're not going to make such a trivial mistake. They will ensure that the mileage, and service values are all stored in a non-volatile memory bank and ensure that the circuit can withstand repeated losses of electricity, dangerously high currents, and probably significantly low currents (as to replicate the slow failure of a battery).Similarly, on my current Lupo (a diesel), I walked out on a very cold morning once and forgot to let the glow plugs sit for a few seconds. I went straight to crank it, and the starter motor turned the engine over but wasn't able to start the car and the electrical spike again caused the dials the scramble (and the loss of all my radio stations grr). The car immediately started on the second go and the dials remain fine to this day. So with that in mind, I'm going to say that this has been potentially caused by a short, perhaps in your sub wiring or the method you fitted it, so make sure you go back and check that before we go any further. Also, without trying to sound mean, if you're mucking around with live wiring, as opposed to disconnecting the negative terminal first, you always run the risk of something like this. Hell, you run the risk of damaging your ECU doing that. You said you bump started it, so I assume the car does start right?We've all ****ed about electrically without disconnecting the battery first, don't get me wrong, but you should always ensure you're not messing about with live wires. Say you're splicing in a boot light or remote central locking as per my how to's, you should splice the respective live wires first, especially a constant live. Regardless of accessory, you should always connect the negative/earth last!! It sounds like your sub is permanently live which means if you didn't disconnect the earth/negative, you've been playing with live wiring. The reason that's dangerous is it only takes a wrench or piece of conductive material to touch the car body and you have a huge short, which can blow all sorts of things: ECU, clusters(?), bulbs, radio... it's just better to be safe than sorry.Anyway, lecture aside let's see what we can do, follow these steps. I'll recount the steps we followed to bring back a different digital dash. It wasn't a Volkswagen, but hopefully this will help, if it doesn't, you might need to get it recoded or even replace with a new one from fleabay (personally I'd go for the second).Disconnect the negative terminal from the battery and leave for 5-10 minutes. Reconnect the negative terminal from the battery and start the car. Drive it for at least 1 mile. In fact, I suggest driving it for about 4 or 5 so you can be sure that the mileage indicator is being incremented (it may immediately come back at this point, however it may not, do not be alarmed if it doesn't). Disconnect the negative terminal for another 5 minutes.Report back with the results. Worst case scenario, it doesn't work. Best case scenario it does. Middle case scenario, it tries to increment a corrupted memory bank and returns an exception which results with the mileage either going incredibly high (999999) or incredibly low (0). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rozzaa146 Posted April 24, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 24, 2014 (edited) OK, firstly, calm down. The main thing is the car should still be driveable, because the immobilizer is a separate box so you won't have fried that. The cluster is an independent unit. They're not even coded to the ECU. On other VW's, the immobilizer is built-in to the cluster. If you had this issue on one of those, then I'd be worried. You should be able to start it and drive it etc, so that's the main thing (after all, it's a car, driving is it's primary function, regardless of whether the mileage is shown), however, let's work logically and see if we can sort it.Secondly, I'm going to take a punt and say draining the battery did not kill your cluster. Even starting your car with low battery shouldn't kill your cluster. I've had two Lupo's. In my first, I drained the battery by leaving the radio on, which meant when I turned the key, I had the same issue as you, the car cranked but not enough juice to start it, the cluster scrambled and went off etc. However, once reconnected to a slave battery, it came straight back and remained till the day it went. Volkswagen spend millions in research and development, imagine if everytime someone let their battery get a bit flat this happened? They're not going to make such a trivial mistake. They will ensure that the mileage, and service values are all stored in a non-volatile memory bank and ensure that the circuit can withstand repeated losses of electricity, dangerously high currents, and probably significantly low currents (as to replicate the slow failure of a battery).Similarly, on my current Lupo (a diesel), I walked out on a very cold morning once and forgot to let the glow plugs sit for a few seconds. I went straight to crank it, and the starter motor turned the engine over but wasn't able to start the car and the electrical spike again caused the dials the scramble (and the loss of all my radio stations grr). The car immediately started on the second go and the dials remain fine to this day. So with that in mind, I'm going to say that this has been potentially caused by a short, perhaps in your sub wiring or the method you fitted it, so make sure you go back and check that before we go any further. Also, without trying to sound mean, if you're mucking around with live wiring, as opposed to disconnecting the negative terminal first, you always run the risk of something like this. Hell, you run the risk of damaging your ECU doing that. You said you bump started it, so I assume the car does start right?We've all ****ed about electrically without disconnecting the battery first, don't get me wrong, but you should always ensure you're not messing about with live wires. Say you're splicing in a boot light or remote central locking as per my how to's, you should splice the respective live wires first, especially a constant live. Regardless of accessory, you should always connect the negative/earth last!! It sounds like your sub is permanently live which means if you didn't disconnect the earth/negative, you've been playing with live wiring. The reason that's dangerous is it only takes a wrench or piece of conductive material to touch the car body and you have a huge short, which can blow all sorts of things: ECU, clusters(?), bulbs, radio... it's just better to be safe than sorry.Anyway, lecture aside let's see what we can do, follow these steps. I'll recount the steps we followed to bring back a different digital dash. It wasn't a Volkswagen, but hopefully this will help, if it doesn't, you might need to get it recoded or even replace with a new one from fleabay (personally I'd go for the second).Disconnect the negative terminal from the battery and leave for 5-10 minutes.Reconnect the negative terminal from the battery and start the car.Drive it for at least 1 mile. In fact, I suggest driving it for about 4 or 5 so you can be sure that the mileage indicator is being incremented (it may immediately come back at this point, however it may not, do not be alarmed if it doesn't).Disconnect the negative terminal for another 5 minutes.Report back with the results. Worst case scenario, it doesn't work. Best case scenario it does. Middle case scenario, it tries to increment a corrupted memory bank and returns an exception which results with the mileage either going incredibly high (999999) or incredibly low (0).Thank you so much for this, it's given me a greater understanding on car electrics as well as what to do. It sorted it all out now! thank you again! Edited April 24, 2014 by rozzaa146 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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