Repairing a badly scratched and discolored nav screen

[danascott]

I recently bought an '05 330 Ci convertible with OEM nav. The 16:9 screen was so badly scratched and discolored it made me sick! Someone must have used some nasty cleaners, solvents and abrasives. Otherwise the unit worked perfectly. I was about to give up and fork over the big moolah for a new screen when I decided to try to remove the messed up anti-glare coating (the blue/purple stuff). I figured on destroying the whole thing but so what since it was a last ditch try and soon I'd be broke from buying the new one. Wow, did this ever work! Absolutely as good as new or maybe better. I started with Collinite's No. 850 Metal Wax, a fingertip and a very soft cotton rag. Just a drop or two on the rag every few minutes. Rubbed lightly for about 15 or 20 minutes. Used Q-tips in the corners. Then some Novus No. 3 heavy scratch remover, and finally some Novus No. 2 fine scratch remover. The whole deal took about an hour or less. Bingo!! The screen is absolutely spotless. And I really can't tell if there is any difference in the glare, but it does seem a bit brighter which is welcome news. Hope this helps somebody else!

[ncx]

Great tip! If you have any pics, post 'em.

:xoutpost:

[cpatzer]

Yea, great tip. I believe this is one of the huge reasons BMW doesn't sell touch screen NAV systems in their cars.

[TerminatorX5]

May I suggest posting this tip onto the main page, along the Navigation section, so it does not get lost in the abyss of the posts and threads? Maybe getting more reader-friendly format, maybe getting some pics, if available, the mods should know how to deal about this...

[danascott]

Boy, I wish I had taken some pics because the result is nothing shy of spectacular. Perfect! If only you could have seen this POS before I laid into it this morning. But by now, I expected this thing to be deep in the trash. I'm surprised at how tough this LCD screen is and how incredibly well it polishes up.

[jammykam]

I had very bad scratches on my nav screen when I bought the car, basically the screen being cleaned/dusted by hand which had scratched into the anti-glare top coat. After doing a lot of research I came across this post on lumenlab. Seeing as how these guys were nutters and had tested lots of different products, I felt a little bit mroe confident!

So I bought from some Peek Metal Polish from eBay and got to work on my nav screen. I removed the bezel surround from the screen so I could get at the whole screen, this is a good article on how to do that. The alternative is to remove the 4 screws from the side of the screen, and with the ribbon cable still attached, flip the screen round and remove the 4 screws from the back. Attach the screen back onto the unit so it has something to hold it in place while you work on it.

Using small amounts of Peek Polish, I polished the screen in straight strokes (vertically, then horizontally) until all the anti glare coat had been removed. I then used a finer polish, in this case Zymol Cleaner Wax (it's very slightly abrasive). It took about 15 mins in total to fully polish the screen.


Here is the screen before...





And here is the results after...







The screen looks a million times better, and I thought the reflection from the sunlight would be bad (I have a E46 'vert as well) but it is not that bad at all.

[Kris@modmynav]

that screen looks just like a BRAND NEW one!! Good Job!