CONTROL PANEL KNOB

[Geesvw]

Thanks for that, I haven’t done it yet, couldn’t find the torx 5 I used to have, so I’ve ordered one from eBay. Was the date and time easy to set afterwards? I’ll be super careful with everything, it’s bettter to try this for £35 rather than give vw close to a grand. Really sick of dealerships and their greed.
I’ll post how I get on, if I have anyone with me I’ll get them to make a video maybe of the process

No problem with the date and time settings. When your remove the small heater plug (the smallest of the three) this has a metal tab, just be careful you don't ping it off as I did, I spent an hour looking for it!, I just reattached it with superglue and it works without a problem. Follow the download sequence for reinstalling, small heater plug first, then you'll have no problems. Best of luck!

 

[dod4luce]

No problem with the date and time settings. When your remove the small heater plug (the smallest of the three) this has a metal tab, just be careful you don't ping it off as I did, I spent an hour looking for it!, I just reattached it with superglue and it works without a problem. Follow the download sequence for reinstalling, small heater plug first, then you'll have no problems. Best of luck!

Thanks. Dreading it, but has to be done. Probably try this weekend

 

[daz60]

Took myself and a friend away for the weekend to Elan Valley Wales, found a nice campsite and went on to set up camp. Went to pop the roof up but felt the button didn’t feel right on the control panel. It was spinning and only catching randomly, so I was too worried to pop roof up in case I couldn’t get it back down again if button didn’t catch again. So we both had to sleep on bottom bed with a dog. Not too much sleep had lol

Anyone know what this will cost to fix? Can I buy a button panel without forking out silly money for a complete control panel? Keep reading things like it will cost 500 quid when it’s just a button issue. If that’s so, then VW are taking the pee and are designing stuff to make them more money, and make us considerably poorer.

If there is a button panel to purchase, are they easy to fit? Any instructions posted here at all? Would I need to disconnect battery/batteries? Would disconnecting batteries bugger anything up like settings that I couldn’t reset without a computer or something ridiculous? Lol

I’ve always been super careful and gentle with this knob button because I read they were delicate from day one of owning my Cali, really don’t understand how it’s gone wrong so quickly as I haven’t camped that much to justify any real wear and tear on that button.

Anyone ever done this job themselves?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

Hi dod4luce, takes no more than 45mins, buy new knob from shop there is a down load on the page, step by step, very easy and a better quality knob.

 

[dod4luce]

Hi dod4luce, takes no more than 45mins, buy new knob from shop there is a down load on the page, step by step, very easy and a better quality knob.

Got one from the shop already, and now my screwdriver has arrived I’m all set for the weekend hopefully. Thanks

 

[daz60]

Got one from the shop already, and now my screwdriver has arrived I’m all set for the weekend hopefully. Thanks

Hi dod4luce, good look for the weekend, the screwdriver is a T6 not T5.

 

[dod4luce]

Bought a little set for mobile phones. Probably a t6 in there hopefully. Thanks for that info though

 

[dod4luce]

Can anyone explain these plugs which are meant to be connected with the smallest first? I don’t see them in the instructions, or is it the one with the clip that folds back? Are there two in there? Help lol going to attempt this tomorrow

 

[dod4luce]

I’m assuming it’s this, found this image whilst trolling through the forum

 

[dod4luce]

I recently did the control knob repair. There's information in the download section on how to do it, but I think it's not detailed enough. To get the control panel out, there's two retaining clips left and right at the bottom, just put a thin screwdriver in one at a time and move the bottom outwards, now what the download doesn't say is there's two clips on the top about 30mm in from each side. With the bottom partially out, put your thin screwdriver in from the front (as this can't really be done from the rear) and work the clips down to bring the unit out. Having got the unit on a table, break the seal to open the unit. Please be careful you don't strain the contact strips. The rest of the download detail is correct, but you have to adjust the retaining screws to get the knob to work properly. Best of luck though, I found this quite difficult and tricky!

What you told me there was soooooooo useful. I wouldn’t have got it out or might have broken something. Thanks for that info. Really helped me

 

[aileron346]

Just done mine and want to say thanks to everyone who had contributed to this knowledgebase! It don’t think it’s particularly easy and every little piece of advice was useful.

So, for people doing this in the future, I’ll add my thoughts:

1) Treat your rotary knobs on thé control panel with extreme care; although possible, the repair is not a bundle of fun. I’d rotate them very gently.

2) If you get early symptoms (basically the rotation not appearing to have its desired effect), I would try and do the job at home to prevent a campsite job. The inability to lower the roof from the menu would be the worst - but I suspect you get early symptoms before a total failure . Mine was slipping one way, working the other.

3)All the forum info was useful - all thé chat and the 2 shop videos and the video in Spanish.

4) A precision tool set with the T6 Torx bit and the pry tools is very useful (eBay)

5) Tricky bits were:
a) removing the control panel...releasing the top tabs on the control panel, mine seemed to self release on rotating the unit out, having released the side tabs. I started to put a thin spoon handle behind the surround at the top just to one side of the display ... but it all then released.
b) releasing all the little tabs to open the unit. Slightly pulling apart at you push the tab seemed to work for me.
The rest was straightforward following the videos carefully.

6) A few forum Qs asked about cable connection order when putting the control panel
I did: Disconnnect big-med-small and connect small-med-big ... worked for me.

 

[Robin Brooke]

Just did mine whilst travelling in Greece, video and instructions together cover it nicely along with a little patience.

I found it was a Torx T6 rather than T5 it says in instructions, also used a dinner knife and small flat head screwdriver.

Trickest for me was extracting the Control Panel from fascia. No specific beta on this, just patience.

The Torx screws were tricky to tighten, I fear I may have slightly rounded one when tightening to get the circuit board tight enough for the buttons to engage and work. Not sure how I'll get round that next time when re-opening, any suggestions welcome.

Thanks everyone for all the info.

 

[Skylark2.0]

I recently did the control knob repair. There's information in the download section on how to do it, but I think it's not detailed enough. To get the control panel out, there's two retaining clips left and right at the bottom, just put a thin screwdriver in one at a time and move the bottom outwards, now what the download doesn't say is there's two clips on the top about 30mm in from each side. With the bottom partially out, put your thin screwdriver in from the front (as this can't really be done from the rear) and work the clips down to bring the unit out. Having got the unit on a table, break the seal to open the unit. Please be careful you don't strain the contact strips. The rest of the download detail is correct, but you have to adjust the retaining screws to get the knob to work properly. Best of luck though, I found this quite difficult and tricky!

Thank you for your help. We have never done anything like this before but the instructions on this forum are amazing, we couldn't have done it without you all!
Here are some extra photos!
When reconnecting the big connector it took us a while to realise that the pink thing helps to pull in the connector to tighten the whole thing up.
It was a fascinating exercise and we were so pleased when everything worked when we finished. This forum is the best, thanks everyone

 

[Sallyf]

Took myself and a friend away for the weekend to Elan Valley Wales, found a nice campsite and went on to set up camp. Went to pop the roof up but felt the button didn’t feel right on the control panel. It was spinning and only catching randomly, so I was too worried to pop roof up in case I couldn’t get it back down again if button didn’t catch again. So we both had to sleep on bottom bed with a dog. Not too much sleep had lol

Anyone know what this will cost to fix? Can I buy a button panel without forking out silly money for a complete control panel? Keep reading things like it will cost 500 quid when it’s just a button issue. If that’s so, then VW are taking the pee and are designing stuff to make them more money, and make us considerably poorer.

If there is a button panel to purchase, are they easy to fit? Any instructions posted here at all? Would I need to disconnect battery/batteries? Would disconnecting batteries bugger anything up like settings that I couldn’t reset without a computer or something ridiculous? Lol

I’ve always been super careful and gentle with this knob button because I read they were delicate from day one of owning my Cali, really don’t understand how it’s gone wrong so quickly as I haven’t camped that much to justify any real wear and tear on that button.

Anyone ever done this job themselves?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

Did you finally manage to get it fixed? Hereford is my local VW garage as well.

 

[RichardH]

Took myself and a friend away for the weekend to Elan Valley Wales, found a nice campsite and went on to set up camp. Went to pop the roof up but felt the button didn’t feel right on the control panel. It was spinning and only catching randomly, so I was too worried to pop roof up in case I couldn’t get it back down again if button didn’t catch again. So we both had to sleep on bottom bed with a dog. Not too much sleep had lol

Anyone know what this will cost to fix? Can I buy a button panel without forking out silly money for a complete control panel? Keep reading things like it will cost 500 quid when it’s just a button issue. If that’s so, then VW are taking the pee and are designing stuff to make them more money, and make us considerably poorer.

If there is a button panel to purchase, are they easy to fit? Any instructions posted here at all? Would I need to disconnect battery/batteries? Would disconnecting batteries bugger anything up like settings that I couldn’t reset without a computer or something ridiculous? Lol

I’ve always been super careful and gentle with this knob button because I read they were delicate from day one of owning my Cali, really don’t understand how it’s gone wrong so quickly as I haven’t camped that much to justify any real wear and tear on that button.

Anyone ever done this job themselves?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

Here's my post from 2019, which may be helpful:

"I've just replaced mine today with a new one from the Cali shop, following the photo-instructions on the downloads section of the Cali forum. Only one of the splines had broken so far, but the button was already partly spinning and I'm sure it wouldn't have been long until another one failed. It's a fiddly job, but perfectly do-able, after Amazon kindly supplied a T5 Torxx screwdriver. Fine-nosed pliers were also helpful for those 4 innermost screws, to loosen them the first half turn (in an emergency they would have been a slow but adequate alternative to the T5 Torxx). Thank heavens for this forum and the knowledgeable members who post such helpful advice! This was my second replacement within six years from new. The first was replaced after only 6 months, under warranty, along with the whole of the control panel. It's disappointing that VW haven't yet replaced this fragile and inadequate part with something tougher. I hope the T6 version is better. Also a shame that the button is only available together with a new front panel - but at least that's a lot less expensive than a whole control unit.

Obviously it's better to have a new button in place, but it was good to read that it's possible to use the controls without a button at all, once the broken one has been removed. Apparently a screwdriver can be used to press and turn the mechanism. That solution could rescue someone's holiday if they were otherwise unable to control the heater / fridge, and it could be a better medium-term solution than reverting to the manual roof mechanism, if a new part isn't quickly available. The epoxy putty and 3D-printing suggestions on the "Rotary knob on control panel" thread sound good too."