So the bleed in the 13 button OBC, as shown in your pic, is due to either the liquid crystal cells being broken and leaking, or layers in the LCD delaminating and leaking. There really is no fix, at least not for the LCD panel itself. The E36 failure is due to lousy electrical contact between the flexible connector strips and the LCD terminals, which is why putting in a "spacer" helps to fix it. It's a totally different failure mechanism.
I have actually disassembled a 13 button OBC and probed the display communication lines and stuff. It is very unlikely that a drop-in replacement exists on the market, either because it was custom made for this, or because it has been 20+ years since it was made. The only real option would be to find an 8 digit LCD that fits in the spot properly and to custom make a new logic/driver board to display the data. The communication protocol used by the OBC motherboard is really pretty simple. But, someone has to actually design, program and fab the new logic board for a new LCD. One idea I have had floating around in my head for years is to rebuild the entire electrical system in the OBC from scratch to have more features and accuracy and to eliminate the stupid coding plug entirely. The circuit in that thing is going on 40 years old, and I bet that ~75% of the guts in there can be replaced with a single modern microcontroller.
I have a bunch of other projects on my plate now, but I might (MAYBE) be able to look into this at some future time. Anyone else with he time and skills is welcome to jump in.
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13 Button On Board Computer SCREEN repair ideas?!
NO I don't have a fix, but I want to start a discussion about it and I'm not looking for "just replace it." Let's get fucking technical here, education is key and it's the 21st century, there has to be a solution to the screen "bleeding" issues we all face with the 13 button OBC.
So since getting my e30 up and running again, I replaced the back light with the Garagistic LED thing, and the light bulb for the buttons has been replaced. And I've finally found a 3.1.2 coding plug. Now one thing I've noticed is that it's not widely known that you need to make sure the coding plug you have correlates to the model you have. Now I have a early M20b25 car... so 55L and 6 cylinder and b25... so I can't use the coding plug for same year M20b27 cars and I can't use the 4.6 coding plug that like 90% of the e30 community uses because that accounts for the 63L fuel tank.
But I got this mint OBC - but it has bleeding. So I started to wonder if I could find a way to repair the screen. I've sold two OBCs but what I'm noticing is that everyone's getting rid of them because they bleed, so naturally the supply is running down. And coding plugs, don't get me started.
I've seen the DIY screen repair for the e36 OBC but who can hook it up with a company that could sell a replacement screen? Garagistic? BavRest? e30ig.com?
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