'01 to '03 Gauge Swap. Doable?

[KevinH1990]

Originally Posted by ChrisZang

Kevin,

just to add one tiny little detail:
The cluster which you reprogrammed was an -> MY 01 cluster made by Motometer.
The 01 -> clusters were made by VDO
And even though they look very similar from the outside they are 100% different on the inside. So I doubt that an EPROM reprogramming which worked on your cluster can simply be applied to a VDO cluster

Chris-

I agree that they are different. The cluster on my car has blue, white and black connectors. His has the later green, blue, gray combination. I have not opened one of the later gauges, so I don't know whether the processes for programming them is similar.

I'm not sure about the gauges, but the circuit board on my clusters was made by VDO.



You can see VDO molded into the plastic at the top of the board.

I think that Chuck is going to be OK with his 03 gauge swap. For some reason, the Boxster clusters are a year ahead of the Carrera clusters. So, a 2001 Carrera Cluster is OK for a 2000 Boxster, but a 2001 Boxster needs a cluster from a Carrera made in 2002 or later. But, I think an 03 Boxster cluster should be fine in an 01 Boxster.

There is still a lot to learn about the clusters. Even the professional speedometer shops (including Palo Alto and North Hollywood) seemed to have limited knowledge about the clusters. I think part of the problem is that VDO does not sell parts to them, so the repairs they can make are limited.

BTW, I see you have a 996 gauge surround. I managed to find one for a good price, so I hope to do that soon.

[gavinyuill]

Originally Posted by KevinH1990

Chris-

I agree that they are different. The cluster on my car has blue, white and black connectors. His has the later green, blue, gray combination. I have not opened one of the later gauges, so I don't know whether the processes for programming them is similar.

The process is exactly the same. The later cars used a different eeprom with more capacity for the additional OBC functionality, so you cannot use programming from an early car in a late eeprom and vice versa, however the structure of the programming is the same.

I've been doing a lot of experimenting with the programming on the eprom and understand most of the important parts of structure for early cars (97>01) now.

I'll share a break down of what I have found very soon, in case there are any other experimenters who what to poke about and scare themselves when their console suddenly pegs all the gauges at maximum.