I know I'm reviving an older thread but when my trip odometer and digital clock reset when I turned the key with below freezing temps and all cluster gauges stopped working below 10 degrees F inside the car late night after work, and didn't come back to life until there was heat in the cabin, my irritation was raising my blood pressure. After changing out the ignition switch (Visegrips on the collar worked for me) and relay 109 without success, I considered this procedure a last resort. I didn't want to wait too long to swap out the expiring capacitor or else I'd have to pay someone to pull the 44 pin Elmos 10417A stepper motor driver/voltage regulator chip.
I used Chris Bell's MFA conversion thread and Lug Nut's thread(
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.php?p=2659276&postcount=3) to pull everything around the cluster. Note that: 1) the headlight knob and dimmer assembly can be left hanging down to the left and 2) the entire cluster surround trim pulls forward and rotates clockwise away to right out of the way still tethered by the coupled OBD connection.
I found that pulling the four gauge needles is best done by pushing down on the faceplate with one thumb (which help keeps the servo motor casings intact and in position in their plastic shroud) and using the other hand to pull the gauge needle. Also, getting the printed circuit card out of the plastic housing is most easily done by having the card down/plastic housing up and simply releasing the 7 tabs so that the PC card simply drops out.
Pulling the capacitor is easliy accomplished by grabbing the cap with Visegrips and heating each lead, one at a time and tugging it through the PC board. Once out, you will see the "C111" silk screen on the board, but more importantly, you will also see the "+" sign. Since the capacitor's wire lead holes were now obscure, I heated up each hole and then inserted a right angle pick and swiveled it around to create the opening for the new cap. Although I haven't done any component-level R&R on a PC board in a long time, I was glad to see that this capacitor has a shrink-wrapped cover and a visible "-" (minus sign) to ensure correct insertion orientation. Inserting the cap, soldering the leads and snipping off the excess completes the PC card surgery.
A final note: take time and care to correctly home your gauges to the lowest white hash mark on the faceplate. I wound up pulling, installing and rotating the needles more than once for correct positioning. Changing the 470uF capacitor was easiest part of this job. Kudos once more, tripl-e.
I disassembled the cluster as described in the TDI MFA article. Froze components with freon and warmed them with a hair dryer blowing through a funnel (to get a narrow stream of warm air) and found a capacitor in the upper right hand corner of the cluster that would quickly turn the displays on or off depending on whether it was hot or cold. Its item # C111 is printed on the circuit board but is hidden by the cap when it is in place. It is a 470uF, 25V electrolytic. When I removed it I could see that it had been leaking oil and looked generally crummy underneath.
