awdinut

I replaced the broken gear, and the other one on the same shaft, with brass gears. And for those who are thinking about doing the same I am here to tell you it was an enormous PITA. It would be almost impossible to explain to some one how to do it because when reassembled the mechanism did not close the door entirely shut. Perhaps one or both replacement gears were slightly smaller in diameter and maybe that would have changed the geometry.

It took a DREMMEL tool and some modification to get things to function correctly. I was never able to contact any of the other people who have done this fix so I did not have any guidance and perhaps others had a better experience.

The good news is that everything works as intended now and I saved a lot of money with the expenditure of a lot of my time. If any one still wants to try this I'll be happy to share what I learned. Just send me a message with a phone number...its all to lenghthy for me to type out in an email with two fingers.

alex22ag

Hi, i have the same problem with my mmi screen now, i took it all appart, and both of the little plastic gears are broken. where did you buy the brass gears that you said you put into your car?

awdinut

One should be able to get them at a gear shop or have the gear shop order gears. Then the gears have to have some machining done. However, in my case the gear/machine shop did not obtain off-the-rack gears like I asked and instead they machined them from brass stock !! That would have no doubt cost a fortune except that they lost the 'pattern' (the broken gears) that I gave them which included the piece that the gears' shaft runs through and is the piece that holds the the gears into place in the chasis of the MMI.

As a result they only charged me $50 becaus, by all rights, I should have ended up with two new gears that would be of no use to me...fortunately the local Audi dealer had a core MMI mechanism lying around(with the usual broken gear)that they did not need. So I took it apart for the piece I needed to puy my MMI back together and everything has been working fine since June.

alex22ag

thanks so much for your help, i was actually going to call you but i wanted to make sure that the local hobby shop couldn't help me before i started bothering you.
Anyways i appreciate you responding so quickly.

skl1

I've always wondered how make the screen just stay open- I figure it will break someday from opening and closing so many times. If I move the car 10' into the garage, the damned screen opens up and then closes again right away. I really never close it when I'm driving so I'd just prefer to leave it open all the time... easy "fix" ?

theanimala

I myself seem to take many little trips, like less than 1 mile, and I too get annoyed by the screen popping up for such a brief duration. I try to remember to hold the audio power button down long enough to turn it off and close the screen before shutting the car off so the screen stays down when I next start it. Granted, I have to drive with no radio, but for those short rides it's worth it. I figure over the past year I have saved my screen from few hundred movements.

hugabone

There is someone selling the repair kit on Ebay for $100. I will order one when I get a chance. Mine makes noise when it fully pops up. First I thought it was because of a bad sensor because it acts like it wants to continue to open and grind. I then realize it could be a bad gear but I dont want to take it all apart until I at least have the gears.

alex22ag

Hey guys i found a way that beats paying $520 for the whole assembly at the dealers..

You can type into ebay "mmi repair kit" and there is one forsale for like $150...

perlfather

This is very useful. I s there a writeup on how to remove everything to get to these marvelous gears?

Mister Bally

I noticed on the two D4 A8's at the Detroit Auto Show (NAIAS); both had a notice on the dash in front of the MMI screen that read: Please do not push the MMI screen to close.

I sure hope they improved the mechanism.