[dodgejcr]

Hi. Back in December, I bought an 08 STS with the Navigation and Bose 15.1. I absolutely love the car and everything is perfect except for the Navigation system.

The display works fine and there is no damage to the screen itself. The only problem is, it has random touches and then doesn't respond to my touches. I am curious as if this is a common issue and if there are any decently easy fixes. I am an electrical technician for a particular branch of the military and I don't mind grabbing the ol' soldering iron and getting down and dirty but I feel as if it were a common problem, the fix would have been tried. I really don't want to scrap it or buy a new one (too expensive) because everything else works as it should and I love throwing in a zeppelin or floyd DTS cd and really enjoy the sound it can produce.

I should note, I have already tried possibly resetting the device by unhooking the battery cable for an hour or so but it didn't reset so I took it out of the dash for a bit just to be sure. Thanks for any help!


I am sorry if this has been posted to death but I have searched and searched this site and several others for a few days now with no avail.

 

[Ludacrisvp]

Ebay units are a couple hundred .. if you are mechanically inclined enough you may be able to swap displays. if you can't then you'd need to swap the entire nav unit (which would be easier) but you'll need to make sure to get the correct part number and then have a dealer unlock the unit to be programmed to your car. If the display only was swapped you wouldn't have to deal with that.
I'd bet that the digitizer is failing ... while I've not heard of it happening on the STS Nav it used to happen frequently on some of the first Windows Mobile PDAs back in the early 2000's. The digitizer is what converts your touch input into something the computer can understand. My backlight doesn't like the cold at all this year and is about 50% dimmer on the left half of the screen when it is really cold out until the unit warms up then its a uniform intensity.

This one would probably work:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/09-10-Cadillac-Sts-CD-DVD-NAV-Radio-Reciever-OEM-/311319570112

As long as you stick with 08+ it should work, as 05-07 had different steering wheel controls than we have. (but just a display swap may be possible from the older gen).
The 09+ model added a speed limit feature which can work on the 08 model if you swap the cluster and do some reprogramming but otherwise the rest of it works as normal in the 08 car.

 

[dodgejcr]

Yeah, that's what I feared. I have no problem changing the resistive digitizer, been doing this stuff for years but I've searched for just the screen and Nada. Anybody know of a place where I can find one?

 

[Ludacrisvp]

There does happen to be one on ebay and it claims to be for STS / Escalade but it costs $300 on its own... I know the STS / Escalade Navs look the same but i'm not entirely sure they are cross compatible based on when I took mine apart a bit.

 

[dodgejcr]

Well that sucks. Instead of spending that money fixing it, I may try to get a new unit or mount a tablet but I really don't want to lose any of the audio quality. Seems I've reached a decision that's going to be tough. Any recommendations? Thanks for the help!

 

[ECha3]

While the advice you've already received is nearly certain to be correct, I would suggest eliminating all doubt by pulling the Nav fuse (or battery cables) for an extended period to ensure all caps drained. As you note, the $ aren't insignificant and the refit of the Nav unit can be a bit tricky if you haven't done it.

Many of us have touched the battery cables together (when disconnected) to reset all the cars modules in short order, but it does make many newer owners uncomfortable. The only subsystem that should require any recalibration is the express windows.

Good luck.