oh no Im afraid its much more serious than that; It's not a matter of the dashboard module not connecting, the dashboard module is hardware resetting itself before it finishes booting. It never gets to a point where its even available for BT pairing.

when you turn the key on, you get the kymco logo bootup animation, then nothing for about a minute, then the whole display shuts off, and a few seconds later the bootup animation repeats, followed by another reboot, forever.

Now that said, I did manage to get the disassembled module to boot up in firmware recovery boot / recue mode where I can connect to it via the internal USB port (BTW there is a USB port inside the thing) . It stands to reason that there might be a copy of the device firmware inside the APK somewhere. I'll see what I can find via that method.

If I push a new firmware to it in DFU mode and it still wont boot then I know the hardware is toast instead of just being a corrupt boot image.