I have this weird problem where the four needles on thed dash (tach, speedo, temp and fuel) goes all the way to the left (bottom) and stays there for a while, long or short. I took out the fuse and checked it, no corrosion there. It seems like (all though I'm not sure) that sometimes hitting the plastic window in front of the dashboard insert makes it all come back. But it may be a coinsidence, I'm not too sure about that.

It doesn't seem like it's the main power to the dash, since the other stuff works (indicator lights, kilometer counter and the "computer").

Is there a standard problem with this that I should check first, or do I have to go the long way, with a multimeter and lots of time? Intermittent problems are of course almost impossible to find, since they never appear when you're trying to find the cause and always appears more often when the wife's driving the car...

Edited 24 May, 201214 yr by Mastiff

Common fault, have a search on here. Generally it is caused by dry joints on the voltage regulator on the dash PCB. You can pull one of the fuses (can't remember which off hand) and that should cause the gauges to work, but trip distance, mpg, clock etc will be forgotten when the ignition is turned off.

Thanks! After a drive I'm now pretty sure that it actually helps to smash my hand in the plastic window on the left side... I'll better find a working set on eBay, I guess. Lots of parts there, luckily!

Rememeber that if you change the dash cluster the immobiliser/key pairings are stored in it, so unless you have access to the SKU and VagTacho you might struggle to actually get the car to start!

if you are half handy with a soldering iron then I suggest resoldering the suspect joints.

Yeah, I got access to just about everything of programming, thanks. My neighbour is a VAG nut, with more VW's and Audis then one would ever need. But if it's possible to find the correct joints soldering is no problem. In my experience finding an intermittent error is a big problem, though. Do you know what joints this is?

This is the thread with detail and pictures of the fix.

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/70218-skoda-instrument-panel-possible-fix/page__p__919677__hl__voltage%20regulator%20octavia__fromsearch__1#entry919677

Thanks! I'm going to start with that fuse 15 cheat, since it's gone a lot worse in two days and I don't have time to rip it out just yeat. A friend's going to mount a cruise control on it (bought the necessary parts on eBay), and I'll take the cluster out at the same time. Talk about clusterf...

check the fuse / wiring terminal on top of the battery. They have a tendency to melt and cause weird things to happen