I've had the common cluster fault. No gauges working except speedo. Okay when ignition cycled after 5 mins and the car is starting to warm up.
Initially I looked into the coding plug. And got as far as figuring out how to make another using a programmer. A good starting point but although successful in making the coding plug it didn't fix it.
I looked at virginising a used cluster. The correct way to do it rather than just plug one in. Most of the spares kicking around are high mileage and if higher than yours and not introduced correctly the higher mileage will be taken. Whilst I've pretty much learned how to do this procedure based on an E46/E90 I haven't quite got my head round a Z3 cluster which is a little different. I haven't given up yet but I've parked it for now.
So I sent the cluster off to Autotronics for repair. It cost me £154.80 including return postage. Mixed experience from Autotronics. The overwhelmingly good news is that it's fixed. I know they replaced some duff components but I don't know which one. They couldn't/wouldn't tell me which is a shame as I wanted to learn. But a 3 day turnaround turned into 3 weeks. And communicating with them was hard worked due to their response times and lack of updates on the repair. I wasn't in a rush, I just wanted to know all was okay and when I might get it back. But all forgiveable I feel given the good result - although this is only day 1 after the repair. Let's hope still okay down the line.
Initially I looked into the coding plug. And got as far as figuring out how to make another using a programmer. A good starting point but although successful in making the coding plug it didn't fix it.
I looked at virginising a used cluster. The correct way to do it rather than just plug one in. Most of the spares kicking around are high mileage and if higher than yours and not introduced correctly the higher mileage will be taken. Whilst I've pretty much learned how to do this procedure based on an E46/E90 I haven't quite got my head round a Z3 cluster which is a little different. I haven't given up yet but I've parked it for now.
So I sent the cluster off to Autotronics for repair. It cost me £154.80 including return postage. Mixed experience from Autotronics. The overwhelmingly good news is that it's fixed. I know they replaced some duff components but I don't know which one. They couldn't/wouldn't tell me which is a shame as I wanted to learn. But a 3 day turnaround turned into 3 weeks. And communicating with them was hard worked due to their response times and lack of updates on the repair. I wasn't in a rush, I just wanted to know all was okay and when I might get it back. But all forgiveable I feel given the good result - although this is only day 1 after the repair. Let's hope still okay down the line.