S4 display / dash not working?

[carpy]

Afternoon. I've found an S4 which I'm quite interested in, but it has one problem that I've not heard of before & I wondered if anyone on here can shed any light on it to see if it's a known problem, and more importantly how easy / expensive it is to get fixed properly.

There's a problem with the dashboard / display and this is what the seller has told me about the problem.....

"The problem on the dash is the display but unfortunately the abs system has detected it as a fault & shut itself off (the auto electrician i use told me it's an open line circuit fault on the dash if that helps but the abs system will be fine when the dash is replaced)"

Anyone got any ideas on this?

Thanks

[saf]

Buy a new dash for it and get it recoded. You cant do much else.

[carpy]

Thanks Saf. Any ideas on what this would cost? Obviously affects the price I'll be willing to pay for the car! Cheers

[saf]

It can be expensive with recoding. I think Audi sell the dash for about £400 last time I checked.

My dash is faulty too but I have lines accross the LED display but no fault codes. I have a replacement for mine that I got second hand off an 18,000 mile car.

Try and get the car Vagcom'd to see if that shows anything up in detail. Theres a possibility the electrician doesnt know much about these cars and you may buy a dash and it doesnt sort the problem out.

I personally wouldn't buy a car if it had an electrical problem that could be problematic sorting out after purchase.

[carpy]

It can be expensive with recoding. I think Audi sell the dash for about £400 last time I checked.

My dash is faulty too but I have lines accross the LED display but no fault codes. I have a replacement for mine that I got second hand off an 18,000 mile car.

Try and get the car Vagcom'd to see if that shows anything up in detail. Theres a possibility the electrician doesnt know much about these cars and you may buy a dash and it doesnt sort the problem out.

Thanks again Saf. Turns out the seller lives around the corner from Unit 20, so if we can agree a deal in principle, Grizz has agreed to healthcheck the car which will hopefully let me know if the cars a good one or one to avoid!

[carpy]

Turns out the car has only had one service since February 2006 and the cambelt probably needs doing too.....and also 7 previous owners. Decisions decisions......im just so fed up with waiting for the "perfect" S4 to come along.

[frazered]

that isn't the best service record for this type of car is it

mine is maybe up for sale if you are interested in a stock power car

[saf]

I would wait until you find what you want and what youre happy with.

[bobbler]

Dont worry mate, they come up frequently enough I thought.
There was real nice one on here which originally drew me to this site, had everything I wanted but I couldn't get the finance sorted in time. So I waited not long and another two came up - including the one I ultimately bought from Mikey another RS246 member.

[frazered]

it must be over a year you have searching now?

[carpy]

I've been looking for longer than a year now. I ended up buying another fast car which I used in the meantime hoping the perfect S4 would pop up. Then I decided to sell it as I could see the performance car market was about to tank and didn't fancy losing a shed load on the car as it was only a temporary measure.

I've had this thing in my head that the S4 I buy HAS to be a facelift. With this prerequisite I've actually missed out on a few really decent heavily modded S4s that I should have just bought, but didn't because I thought a facelift equivalent would come up! But every single heavily modded car that's come up has been a pre facelift!

I'll be keeping the S4 forever and doing a lot of stuff like pole positions etc so if I get a pre facelift it will always niggle me, even though there's hardly any differences between them.