Car starts 1st turn of the key then cuts out within a second. Car has now been offroad over a year with this issue and requires mot. Sent cluster off for repair to specialist and came  back with more issues but still immobiliser issue  ... After a second attempt at repair car started first turn of the key  and ran for 1 hour with a successful restart after an hour. 2 days later mot booked and car back to starting and dying within 1 second...Instrument cluster repair company say it is not worth a third attempt at repair and refunded cost of repair although I am out postage costs.  They suggested a second hand cluster and recoding to get it to work. Is this easy / possible and at what cost ? . Just feel sick as car is in very good condition with 4new springs / drop links and bushes fitted ready for mot and then this happened! Any advice greatfully received as the only other option I can see is to scrap the car and get it towed away.

Is it definitely the cluster at fault? I assume you've had some diagnostics done on the car?

Dont spend any more money needlessly without having a VCDS scan done.

 

If its not an external fault like the key chip (have you tried the other keys?) or the reader coil the immobiliser can be removed by reprogramming of the ECU which may well be cheaper.

 

To give an idea of cost I bought a remapped "plug n play" ECU from Ebay for my 105hp TDi Octavia for around £100, for that the guy had to buy a second hand ECU, reprogram it with the new map and disable the immobiliser so as to make it plug n play. I would think for half that one of those guys could do just the latter to your ECU.

Hi Phil, no between being  under lockdown and after trying 4 local garages not one wanted to touch the car as it had a known fault! Probably easier to charge £250 for an oil and filter 'service ' and do 8 per day than have to get stuck into a real fault With no real time scales... Should have said at one point a few months ago car started and ran ok but after an hour of sitting in driveway at idle  it started giving out 3 loud beeps from dash and rev counter stopped working.  After a few seconds it came on again and fuel guage went off etc etc . Instrument cluster repairers seem to be well, respected  and  said processor fault at first attempt and another fault found on second attempt when it was returned working albeit  briefly.

Thanks F/l  VCDS seems to be the way to go but saying that if the cluster repairers found no issue I think they would have said I would like to  believe . Would need to get someone mobile as car does not run and has no MOT. 

On 28/06/2021 at 14:33, kaspian said:

Car starts 1st turn of the key then cuts out within a second. Car has now been offroad over a year with this issue and requires mot. Sent cluster off for repair to specialist and came  back with more issues but still immobiliser issue  ... After a second attempt at repair car started first turn of the key  and ran for 1 hour with a successful restart after an hour. 2 days later mot booked and car back to starting and dying within 1 second...Instrument cluster repair company say it is not worth a third attempt at repair and refunded cost of repair although I am out postage costs.  They suggested a second hand cluster and recoding to get it to work. Is this easy / possible and at what cost ? . Just feel sick as car is in very good condition with 4new springs / drop links and bushes fitted ready for mot and then this happened! Any advice greatfully received as the only other option I can see is to scrap the car and get it towed away.

 I has a similar problem. Got a second hand cluster with brain and key. Car started and works. However, the radio stopped working. I was told that I may need to get the radio from the car that the used cluster came from.  Will try that.

Yes. The radio code is also stored in the cluster.

 

Either that or there are other ways to get the radio codes. I've used an eBay service for a Skoda swing radio before. I had a new cluster installed and paid a few €€s and got a code emailed to me that worked 👍

Did they provide one code or a list of codes? Care to share the codes they sent? Will try.

 

It was one code. Specific to the vehicle. Had to send the serial number etc from the stereo to them.