email

Spyder Instrument Console
October 2015:  Instrument Cluster on a Can-Am Spyder.

Spyder Instrument Console Illumination – a modern problem.
My Spyder has a flickering instrument console – not the actual digital readouts, just the overall illumination of the panel, and only on the right, tacho side of the console.  It doesn’t really worry me much because I rarely use the Spyder at night.  So that must be the bulb, right?  But there is no ‘bulb’ as such.  I took the console out and carefully disassembled it.  For each ‘bulb’, there is an LED soldered to the circuit-board, and a flexible tube in a flat S-shape running ‘through’ the board.  These ‘Light Guides’ point the light from the business side of the circuit-board to the correct part of the instrument cluster on the other side.  The LEDs at the circuit-board end of the Light Guides are soldered in place, and the circuit-board is a ‘layered’ design.  Even if you could find the correct LED to replace it, by un-soldering the LED you would probably do more damage than good.  So they are NOT replaceable.  The only solution is to replace the entire instrument cluster.
Spyder console
BRP, of course, is not the only vehicle manufacturer heading down this path, making entire ‘modules’ available for spare parts rather than the hundreds of individual components that make up those modules, but this is a particularly stupid module decision.  OBVIOUSLY bulbs will wear out and fail, whether they are incandescent or LED.  Most owners would be unhappy with, but could live with the cost – about US$250 plus freight ( Oct. ’15 )...  so probably about AU$350 landed here.  One very expensive replacement ‘bulb’ !!!
However, it doesn’t end there.  A new instrument console cannot be fitted by an owner – Nanny would refuse to start the engine.  Some private owners have a cut-down version of the BRP Diagnostic System, BUDS, to tell Nanny that it’s ok to accept the new display module, but this version cannot reset the odometer or other sensitive readings that might affect resale value, so they must take it to a Dealer to have the new console fitted.  Dealers have the full-blown version of BUDS capable of resetting the odometer, hour-meter, etc.  Otherwise the new console would read zero klicks, zero hours, zero recalls fixed, etc.  Having the Dealer fit the console ( 5 minutes ) would cost about AU$100 – that’s getting close to $500 to fix a dodgy light!
I can live with no illumination of the pretend-analog tachometer – I rarely look at it anyway, since there is a digital readout of revs – but the whole console is still occasionally flickering.  It’s just annoying – you like to have these things right!
I will have to simply put up with a console with one occasionally-flickering instrument light.  Not happy, Jan...
*  *  *  *  *
back to top