Dashboard gone haywire?

Hello, everyone

I encountered an issue with my dashboard today (and it also happened on 25th of July last time), I was driving normally like always and all of a sudden my dashboard went crazy.

To be specific, RPMs stopped showing, my speed shows as 0 and a bunch of indicators lit up, fuel reserve blinks constantly (even at full tank) and what is worse, the dash stays like that even when I remove the ignition key and the dash stays lit up for hours.

Only thing that helps (and helped before) is to disconnect the car battery.

Here is a picture of the dash in it's current state (am at work, have no way of disconnecting battery now).

Anyone know what may be causing this? Thanks for the help

1Scotty1 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 5:39 am I encountered an issue with my dashboard today (and it also happened on 25th of July last time), I was driving normally like always and all of a sudden my dashboard went crazy.

Hi

I've had the same, but not for a long time.

The CAN/VAN bus locks up and you loose the speedo .

It was the speedo that I noticed first, but yes, other dashboard items stopped working.

Disconnect the battery and reconnect it, resets all the computers including the CAN/VAN BUS and it works again.

I didn't dig into 'why', being intermittent that is just not worth the time considering the fix is quite simple and the fault finding will be tedious and quite probably fruitless.

The total mileage is shared between the BSI (fuse box in the glove box) and the instrument cluster.
So I can only guess the problem is either the BSI, the cluster or the wiring in
between, as the dash and BSI are not communicating with each other.
If you had a LEXIA it should tell you which one is not communicating (the BSI or the cluster).
If the central display works when the dash goes haywire, then the problem would most likely be the cluster. For the MK1 (pre facelift) C3's the dash and central display are on the comfort VAN bus.
If the central display acts up at the same time, then I would say it's the BSI or the wiring. Try opening the doors when the dash acts up and see what the central display says (if the central display isn't already mucking up). If it's only the dash that wont 'shut down', again, that points to the dash.
Being intermittent and a common fault between yours and Arfur's, I would tend go for a wiring or connector issue. However it's also possible the VAN BUS decoder in the dash or BSI has a production fault.
The most logical action would be to replace the dash, but if it's a production fault it could possibly pop up again in the replacement dash (unlikely)? ...And you would have the mileage problem to deal with too!
It seems pretty rare. I haven't seen or heard of it before but it seems Arfur has seen it.