No, when you turn your headunit on it sends a positive 12v feed to the MFD making the date disappear and to kick in the display, but because no data is being sent from the headunit as the headunit doesnt support the features, it just stays blank.

Just cut the red/grey wire, and all will be fine, as this is the wire that sends the +12v feed to the MFD.

its connected by the iso connectors at the rear of the h/u. so when the head unit turns on it trys to take a signle to display ur radio station etc but it cant

cheers you've bin a gr8 help.

just one more question, how does it know that you've turned the new head unit on, how is it connected to it?

When you connect a new stereo up to it, it will still display the temperature and time, but unless you cut the red/grey wire in the loom, the date will disappear when you turn your new stereo on. It will reappear when you turn off the stereo.

i have a corsa 1.2 LS '96. and as some of you know it come with a rubbish tape player. I want to rip it out and put in a cd player but i don't want to lose the mfd, anyone who's done this let me know what happens to it. I don't expect it to still react to the tape/cd player just still display the time etc. if it is possible to get it to still work without the tape player how do you do it, can you just disconnect the tape player and it works fine?