Out of the cluster repair game

I'm sure most of you know I have stopped repairing and modifying B4 clusters. Lots of life changes over the last year, and I just simply don't have time for it anymore. My computer with all my EEPROM data dying and not having anything backed up was the final nail in the coffin. I was very happy to help and support this small group of TDI owners for many years, thank you to everyone who let me do work for them ! That being said, I am selling all of my B4 cluster stuff. If any of you are interested here is a link http://ebay.us/YmZv0A?cmpnId=5338273189.

Oh mann I hear rumors of this. Hope everything is well for you. Thank you for the support. Just out of curiosity, how did the computer die? Hardrives can be recovered. The data is still there. Maybe somone can pick up the bits?

Things are going well, the life changes have all been positive just less time for things like this. The drive was in a very old Pentium 4 computer, the drive was equally as old and the spindle motor failed. I couldn't justify the money for data recovery, I remember a few things about the EEPROM dump locations and values. I will document and post here for the group to have some time. Thanks for the kind words !

Sad news, Thanks for the years of being THE B4 cluster guy it is very much appreciated. Btw, if you don’t mind me asking, what kind of money would it take to recover your data?

The motor drives are fairly easy to replace. Typical drive service on a drive that has either motor (platter drive or head drive) is fairly cheep. Recovering one that was in a fire gets costly. Probably a few hundred bucks.

The computer is long gone, I havn't been doing clusters for a while and sent it to the scrappers. I had a backup at one point in time, if I eventually find it Ill upload all the info I have.

Sad to hear! I got one from you last year, TDI with MFA cluster merge. Happy with how it turned out. Sold the car to a customer of mine and he's happy with the mod.

just like the guy who tossed millions of $ in the landfill on those hard drives with bit coins on them lol.


out of curiosity, in the last few years of you doing this work, how many would you say you did? a few, a few hundred? like with the slow death of a 20+ year old car, how many of these get rebuilt?

The number of clusters coming in has slowly gone down over the 10 years I've been doing this. I used to get so many a month I was doing nothing but clusters in the evening. In the last year it has probably gotten down to 1 to 2 every couple months. If some one wanted to put the effort in again and read the EEPROM dumps off some of the conversion clusters Ive done it could all be pieced back together. I figured it all out threw trial and error over time. Parts are getting very hard to find to fix them, I have a decent collection that hopefully will let some one fix a few more.

Mongler98 said:

just like the guy who tossed millions of $ in the landfill on those hard drives with bit coins on them lol.

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No, it’s nothing like that. Where do you come up with this stuff? Derek provided a much needed service and did a great job at it. The loss of that benefit is a loss to the entire community.

Thank you Derek, I greatly appreciate what you were able to do for us to keep our cars alive. You concerted or repaired a number of clusters for me over the years, and if we ever meet up, the beers are on me. Definitely let me know if you make it to the east coast.

Mongler98 said:

just like the guy who tossed millions of $ in the landfill on those hard drives with bit coins on them lol.

out of curiosity, in the last few years of you doing this work, how many would you say you did? a few, a few hundred? like with the slow death of a 20+ year old car, how many of these get rebuilt?

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I am slackjawed that you would say something like that. How is your analogy even remotely close? Derek was well aware of what he was tossing in the landfill, the guy who dumped the bitcoin drive had mistaken it for a derelict junk drive when he was cleaning out his living space. I would venture that by the time the bitcoin drive is located bitcoin will be at its longterm intrinsic value of zero.

There is no one besides Derek that I would trust to repair the finicky B4 cluster. I have heard the horror stories from friends where I live who sent their non-VW cluster to one of the generic repair houses and were then later contacted by the repair facility and informed that they were unable to repair the cluster and it would not be returned.

Derek provided a valuable service that will be very much missed by the community and is a further example of the reduction in available parts / services for these cars.

Steve

Hi Derek, sorry to hear about your lost hard drive. Glad that things are going well for you. Thank you for all you have done for the group! Cheers and best of luck!

Don Starr

calm down steve, it was a joke.

No, I don’t think it was, based on your history.

Thanks Derek, for helping to keep our cars alive!

Here is a link to a TDI non MFA cluster dump, I have highlighted what I remember and put an explanation with them. In the event I find my info I will update you guys, Hopefully a member will take over where I left off and keep these cars supported for years to come!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FNHHTHhgjE9wyXlWVT404OeE39uEqc6c-PqhrxIVOtc/edit?usp=sharing


A list of tools I use for cluster repair as well
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VnL9hvWN-G6BU-DNYaSuuiwm5K_QJUVc-kq4IMpdF-k/edit?usp=sharing

ChubsAuto said:

Here is a link to a TDI non MFA cluster dump, I have highlighted what I remember and put an explanation with them. In the event I find my info I will update you guys, Hopefully a member will take over where I left off and keep these cars supported for years to come!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FNHHTHhgjE9wyXlWVT404OeE39uEqc6c-PqhrxIVOtc/edit?usp=sharing


A list of tools I use for cluster repair as well
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VnL9hvWN-G6BU-DNYaSuuiwm5K_QJUVc-kq4IMpdF-k/edit?usp=sharing

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Amazing. thank you!

I would have bought that HDD of of you to have the data recovered. Sorry that you had to give up this profession. Best of luck to you.

"Guru's" come in all sizes and shapes. You leaving our community leaves us one less, and this tdi community will miss your services. Best of luck.

ChubsAuto said:

Hopefully a member will take over where I left off and keep these cars supported for years to come!

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I was the winner of the auction of the rest of Derek's B4 cluster stuff, and made sure of it. I can't promise anything right away, but my plan is to get set up with everything Derek had tool and equipment-wise to continue on and if I can't...to find a worthy and capable successor.

It'll be a couple weeks until I can drive out to his place and pick up the whole lot of it and soak up as much knowledge as I can in my visit(s) he's graciously storing it all for me until then. This will be a challenge and a learning curve for sure but one that I welcome.

Don’t you have enough car stuff to do, lol? I hope you figure out the repair process,.

-Todd

LOL kind of, I'm cutting some projects loose and moving into a bigger shop soon. Lack of space and functionality is my biggest obstacle atm.

Hey Dave,if you take the 90 out there, on your way back if I'm not working I'd like to buy you a nice dinner near my I-90 exit in Batavia for the help on my B4 years ago...

If it works out, that'd be great Bob.

Im very happy someone else will be even attempting to take this over. Derek took care of the cluster on my B4 and its guys like him that greatly help the community to keep these cars alive and well. I was already thinking ahead to what i would do if mine died again. It would most likely be just retrofitting some type of a universal digital dash. I would much rather keep the car stock (ish) tho. I dont plan on getting rid of it anytime soon! Its only got 376,000mi on it and i just did all the body work and painted it last year too.

Derek- Thank you for all you did over the years! You repaired my cluster some years back, thanks again.

Sad to hear of the loss to our community. Keeping an eye on this thread to see if the alternate pans out as I have a cluster that is down.

I finally got my Jetta TDI cluster back a couple weeks ago. I shipped it out for repair, back in April 2019. Bad board and Derek didn’t have any spares. This was a cluster that he repaired about a year previous. It had a bad board, back then, but luckily, he had a spare.

Still boxed up, in the back of the wagon, waiting to ship to Dave, lol.

-Todd

Just stumbled upon this thread doing some extra reading today. Dave, did you ever start messing around with Chub's repair tools? I've got a spare B4 cluster with a burned out LCD in it. Haven't tried plugging it up or anything, it actually looks partially burned/melted right in the middle.