Hi folks,
I'd like to tell you the story of my full FIS instrument cluster I installed on my Volkswagen Polo (2004 so it's a 9N type).
It all started the past summer, when a guy contacted me for a FIS cluster he was selling. He contacted me via a forum about VW Polos in which I wrote I was searchig for a working cluster full FIS for my car. This guy was selling a like-new cluster with new display: it was in mint conditions. Coding service was also included, and I was looking for that cluster for a long time. I decided to buy it (I paid it too much, now I know it) and I sent him a complete eeprom reading of my original cluster (basic version, with no display, no board computer, nothing).
Honestly, I wasn't able to do an eeprom reading, so that guy (who lives more than 800 km far from me) said me to drive for about 30 km to get the eeprom reading done by a friend of him. I did so, his friend red my eeprom and sent the file to the "seller". About one month later, they said my instrument cluster FIS was ready: the guy shipped it to me, then I went to his friend in order to get it installed and correctly coded. All seemed to be fine: he wrote the eeprom and gave me instruction on how to code the cluster with VCDS, things such as soft coding, language and so on. A few days later I decided to do a complete scan with VCDS.
First bad surprise! VCDS was showing a wrong VIN. My car VIN ends with 403, and all previous scans obviously showed it correctly. In this scan, the VIN ended with 407. It was all correct except from the last number. I knew there's no way to edit the VIN via VCDS, but I took a look in adaptations channel of address 17 instrument cluster. Second bad surprise! Some channels were missing: oil type (LL or regular), time since service, km since service, time to service, km to service, etc.
I contacted the seller to explain the problems I was facing. Please note: I didn't request a refund, and I didn't say I wasn't happy of my cluster either. I just said I found some "little" problems and I asked him to help me to solve them. The first response from him about the wrong VIN was "that's no problem, the car will work as normal, you can use it anyway because a wrong VIN doesn't really matter". I was quite disappointed because I know the VIN is fundamental for the correct servicing of the car, and you know what a wrong VIN can cause if the car is serviced by an official dealer, and I always do services at my local VW dealer (really honest and professional). When I asked the seller for a way to solve the problem he stopped responding to my messages and blocked me on WhatsApp.
Since then, I started searching and learning about how instrument clusters work, and I found some interesting programs (VAGeeprom programmer, vag dash editor, Vag Tacho, etc). I think the most easy-to-use of all of them is VAGeeprom, since it works well with my FTDI interface and I can easily read and write on my cluster with it.


Long story short, my question is: how can I restore the correct function of my FIS cluster? I searched and I found a dump file that seems to be the correct one for my cluster (6Q0 920 840). Car is a 1.4 petrol with BBY engine. I’m thinking about writing the dump I found on my cluster, but I don’t know how to put it on new mode in order to code it correctly with VCDS. Or is there a simpler way to do this? Any suggestion is really appreciated.