kbob999

I find it helpful to see how others have done DIY projects, so here is my contribution to the forum.

I replaced my faded SL55 LCD panels with donor LCD's from a wrecked SL500. The LCD's are not available new to my knowledge, so used parts are the only way to go. In this case, the used LCD panels were only marginally better, so I am still searching for bright LCD's.

mertd93

Many thanks to kbob999 for the wonderful diy instructions, very easy job if you follow the steps carefully.

gedsl

What an awesome guide! I have been able to find a new LCD display that has the same number stamped on the copper portion in white (92 290 237) however, the description states that it is for a 2003 to 2006 model year. Also, the other number stamped on the black portion shows 3722-90 and mine is 6526-90. Do these numbers have to match exactly?

kbob999

I strongly believe the LCD panels are interchangeable for all models that use the 2 'oval' LCD panel below the speedometer and tach. They are found in S, E, and SL models from 2003-2006?
If the cluster has these LCD's, you should be able to swap them to your existing cluster.

Here is a China source on eBay that looks similar, but different. Not advertising or suggesting these, just pointing out the style of the LCD panel.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mercedes-R2...ZRw6:rk:1:pf:0

gedsl

I have ordered this item. The number shown on the top (92 290 237 in the copper portion) is the exact number that is on my unit. The other number (3722-90 shown in the black) portion is different from my number 6526-90. I will post the results as soon as I receive and install the item. Thank you for all of you help and recommendations.

gedsl

After replacing the LCD display on my speedometer, how do I ensure that I have replaced the display needles (temp, speedo,tach, and fuel) correctly ?

kbob999

gedsl,
If you follow my DIY, I would recommend NOT removing the needles, but simply sliding the LCD behind the face of the instruments. Much easier.
The DIY explains how to replace the needles if you go that route, but it is more difficult and prone to errors.

gedsl

Huge thank you to kbob999. Received replacement LCD speedo display screen. Installed according to his directions. Works great.

kbob999

gedsl - Let us know how the China LCD panels work out. I'm sure others (and myself) will be interested in the image quality and life span of the panels.

alk247

Gents, do I understand correctly that using this part off E-bay would solve pink shrimp problem?

kbob999

kittyandgary

PM sent to gedsl and kbob999

Gary

gedsl

So far the China LED's are working great. Easy install following kbob999 instructions.

kittyandgary

Thank you gedsl. Any estimate of amount of time or miles the car has been driven since the install?

Really appreciate the prompt response.

Gary Knox

blueduramax

I know this is mostly an old thread, but my car has the pink shrimp and I want to fix it. Is there any US source for these displays (besides used)?

kbob999

I have only seen the new China replacements. None in the US except used.

JohnYoung

Hi all, and a special 'thank you' to KBob for the wonderful tutorial. I purchased a nice-looking 2005 SL500 with a broken top for a very low price about a year ago. Having sorted the top (schlepping the pump to the US for rebuilding there) and replaced some of the degraded high pressure suspension lines, it is now a very nice driving car, albeit with a 'service brakes' white error warning, and these very ugly LCD panels:

I had thought initially that there was just dust on the panels--and when I got the panels out (thanks to KBob's tutorial), here is what they looked like:

Pretty awful, right? Well, I spent a few days looking for reasonably priced spares and all I could find was 150 USD plus, or a spare whole cluster for about the same. I even tried looking up all the various part numbers I could find on this thread and elsewhere for these little panels. They really should cost only a few dollars each. They are nothing special as far as I could tell.

The high price of the spares really annoyed me. I kept looking at these panels and thinking about it, and googling. And after closely looking at photos I found that the problems were all in the upper plastic layer of the panels--what turns out to be a layer of polarizing material. This lead me to refresh my recollection on how LCD panels work and that it was, in fact, possible to remove and replace this layer. It turns out these problems were pretty common a few years ago in a wide variety of LCD products. Here's a video of a guy repairing a TV screen . And that lead me to this guy replacing the polarization layer on a cell phone . I then started whatsapping around Dubai (where I live) to try to find a shop that can do this work. As I said, this was common a few years back, but not so much now. It took me about a half dozen inquiries before I found a place, iStyle in Bur Dubai, that could do the job.

Last night I took the panels over, and here are a couple of photos of the technicians working on my SL500 panels:



And here is the finished panel:

This morning at home I removed the protective film iStyle kindly left on and installed them in the panel.


I don't know if the panels will work because I have not had a chance to install them, but if they don't it is most likely down to something I did. For example, I broke the corner off the left hand display just on the edge of the liquid layer, so that may well go bad. But again, that will have been my fault.

I will post again after I put the cluster back in. And thanks again to KBob without whose help I most assuredly would have busted up the panels completely.

marko69

Thanks John, you inspired me to check out this repair. I watched about 20 youtube video's on how to replace polarizing film. I'll give it a shot soon.

JohnYoung

My pleasure Mark. But in all honesty I've been feeling sheepish about not contributing more here--I've learned so much from this forum, and this is my first benz. Mostly I'm a Land Cruiser guy--fortunately both communities seem to have a lot of good will when it comes to preserving older examples.

For what it is worth, I would recommend finding a shop that does this every day. I paid the equivalent of 55 USD to have both of them done. I -might- be able to do it, but I have a friend in the cell phone business back in Singapore and I learned that manipulating these slivers of glass and plastic really does come best with practice. or maybe I'm just fumble fingered. That's why I don't begrudge getting help on this to get it right. That said, the polarizing material is really cheap on Amazon and you could do it and redo it over and over until you get it right--unless you break the glass. But I admit it was hard to find a shop that would still do this.

Either way, the best of luck!

This evening I was cleaning the plastic cover for the cluster and tomorrow I will plug the thing in and see how the repair went.

JohnYoung

So here's an update. The concept is sound. The execution was...flawed.

The displays looked bright white and washed out.

And I lost half the display on one--the display I cracked.


I suspected that we had gotten the polarization angle wrong, so I pulled one of the LCDs, removed part of the polarization layer we had put on, and changed the angle so as to make the darkest possible throughput--45 degrees off of the original replacement filter; it looked like this:

And then I threw it back in the car to see, and confirmed the solution.

Tonight I'm going to take a very close look at the left display to see if I can figure out why I lost half of it, but I may have to buy a fresh LCD, darn it. This one has the odometer so I've got to get it fixed, eventually at least.

Frederick NL

It is a brave experiment. And at least your tank is full.

marko69

Total failure. Replaced the film, polarization is wrong, but now I have dancing ballerina's on the display. May have mishandled it now I'll have to get a new lcd. Broke the black ribbon clip, may have misaligned the ribbon. Left side display is now flashing intermittently, didn't even touch that side.

blueduramax

So sad! I'll bet there were hundreds of us hopeing you would succeed. I"ve still got a couple of the panels that I have experimented with to no avail.

JohnYoung

Don't give up yet! It has taken me a few days to get the material, but I did and just this morning started putting things together.

The trick was to get more material put the cluster back in without applying the material and make sure of the angle. Like this, and then mark it with a permanent marker (on the protective removable layer, not the film itself)



In my case the film I had worked best at exactly 45 degrees, so I used a right angle to cut to that angle.





Then I filled in the corners (which are covered by the bezel anyways, but I was worried about light leakage.



Here's the finished product.



I suspect I do not have the best material but hopefully it will be good enough. I hope to plug it in later today and see.

JohnYoung

So I plugged it in and I think it is an acceptable result. My main problem before was that it was completely unreadable in bright light/daylight. That now seems to have been resolved.




But, sadly, I did bung one of them up getting it out so I still need to replace one of the modules. I can't not do this because the odometer is blanked out.

The polarizing material I used was for an iphone 4, in case anyone else wants to try this. A fair amount of effort is involved, but I really, really didn't want to spend so much on LCD modules that should be a few dollars at most.

Just wanted to add that it looks better in the dark than my photo suggests. My phone's camera makes it look more washed out than it ought to, I think--maybe because of the ambient light where the car was sitting. Ideally I'd suggest getting a bunch of different self-adhesive polarizing films and seeing what works best. As mentioned, I used film for an iPhone 4.