How To Fix Your Instrument Cluster For Free

Jack Baruth
by Jack Baruth

Oh, Porsche. You so crazy.



When it comes to the Ohio spring, I typically leave my Porkers inside until the second rain after the last salting. When I did so this time I was greeted by an odd Nurburgring-looking disfigurement of the multi-function LCD on my 2004 Boxster S Anniversary. Over the past decade, the little water-cooler has displayed a middling variety of idiosyncrasies, but this one annoyed me more than most for some reason.

A trawl through Google showed that plenty of 996-generation Porsches eventually suffered from frozen pixels or a pixellated display. Nobody seemed to know what caused it or how to fix it. A search for replacement instrument clusters didn’t turn up anything terribly affordable, and it didn’t help that most of them were white-faced gauges instead of the black faces that came standard on the Anniversary car.

What to do? I thought long and hard about what might have caused the issue. Porsche painted the negative terminal on my Boxster with red paint, so at least twice I’ve blown out the fuse in the radio jump-starting the car, but this wasn’t the case for this spring. The only thing I’d done was run it when it was a little cool — forty-nine degrees, as you can see.

It made sense that the prehistoric Porsche LCD might have frozen or locked the pixels when activated in “cold” weather. Forget, for a moment, the fact that you’d put your fist through the dashboard if your Ford Focus or Chevy Cruze behaved this way. Porsches made it to the top of the Consumer Reports survey because nobody drives them and when they do they assume the problems are their own fault because they are nouveau trash who don’t know who to operate a fine Finnish convertible.

If cold weather was the fault, perhaps hot weather could be the cure. So, while I was traveling I left the Boxster to sit outside in ninety-degree heat for a week with the windows up. Any dog in there would surely have died a thousand deaths and in fact I bet the leather seats aren’t too happy about it. But when I returned and fired it up — voila!

After a few weeks away, it was nice to put the top down, put on my Paradise Valley straw hat, and drive downtown to hang out a bit. I really felt like the carefree old guys you always see in Boxsters. Sometimes I think I’ll sell this thing. Sometimes I think I’ll keep it. For now, my doubts have vanished like frozen pixels in the summer sun.

Jack Baruth
Jack Baruth

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  • 95_SC 95_SC on Jul 03, 2014

    So were one to live un upstate New York this cluster would work for about two months out of the year. Pity, the mid engine would probably be OK in the snow.

  • S2k Chris S2k Chris on Jul 03, 2014

    My S2000's garish digital display is just fine at 1 year older and more than 2x the miles. Just sayin'....

    • Corey Lewis Corey Lewis on Jul 03, 2014

      Oh please, your S2000 was much less expensive. It's supposed to be more reliable. ;)

  • Master Baiter I'm skeptical of any project with government strings attached. I've read that the new CHIPS act which is supposed to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S. is so loaded with DEI requirements that companies would rather not even bother trying to set up shop here. Cheaper to keep buying from TSMC.
  • CanadaCraig VOTE NO VW!
  • Joe This is called a man in the middle attack and has been around for years. You can fall for this in a Starbucks as easily as when you’re charging your car. Nothing new here…
  • AZFelix Hilux technical, preferably with a swivel mount.
  • ToolGuy This is the kind of thing you get when you give people faster internet.
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