Fixing electrical gremlins this weekend....found unique speedometer governor

[William Ng]

I hope everybody had a joyous holiday!

I'm home visiting the folks and decided it was a good time to give the ol'
200q some much needed work. My instrument cluster blinks as much as some
of the Xmas lights decorating the houses in NYC! The AutoCheck, checked
out long time ago. And the speedo does the lambada all too often lately.
 :-P
I managed to pull out the cluster without too much trouble. Taking it
apart was quite fun. I discovered the PO(s) had tried to fix the circuit
board, but botched the soldering job. Let's hope I can do a better job.
While everything was separated, I remembered my speedo used to stick at
around 65-68mph. I would thump the dash and it'll move a bit. I manually
rotated the speedo needle to see if the movement was smooth. It made
little crunching noises and stopped at 100mph.
Oh no! Dread of another Audi Gods smighting filled my head.
Another try and it this time it was smooth all the way to 155 mph, then
stops there. I initially thought maybe it was mechanically restricted
there on purpose, since I've heard most german cars were governed at 155
mph. But the crunching noises were still present and I couldn't understand
how Audi/VDO engineers made such a sloppy movement, being the anal
retentives there are with mechanical things.
Closer inspection with a flashlight revealed my governor....it was german
allrighty.... german cockroach! DOH!
The sucker crawled in there and died, right between the windings and
rotor. I was dragging its corpse with the speedo needle. This explains why
my cousin was so thrilled one time when we convoyed a group of cars to NYC
late at night. He thought it was fun how we had blasted along at 95mph
through most of it. I stared at him in a confused look thinking, "But I
didn't even break 70mph???"
:-D
The speedo is now nice and smooth all the way past 160mph.

I've read that some have upgraded the instrument cluster's lighting with
higher wattage bulbs.
Most of the gauges use 1W bulbs, except the gas gauge being 2W(Green
base). And the idiot lights are 1.2W. I want to brighten the orange/red
backlighting by subbing with 2W bulbs. Does anyone who have already done
this mod know if these bulbs are available at a FLAPS or Radio Shack? Any
BTDTs? Thanks in advance!

I'll try to take some pictures of the instrument cluster's many pieces and
post them soon.  Better than the drawings in the Bentleys.

 ---->
My other tasks....
The low beams also don't work when it's real cold outside.
But starts working after the car warms up. I'll need to determine if it's
the stalk switch, or my suspicion, that front lamp monitoring module.

The alternator also doesn't maintain a reasonable voltage with accessories
switched on. I'm going to try the voltage regulator diode mod from the
Pantera webpage.

If there's enough weekend left, I'll rewire the driver's door pass through
wiring. Many broken wires in that rubber accordian.
:-P

Will
1990 200q

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--
William Ng
1990 200 quattro
audi200quattro at yahoo.com    willng at netzero.net

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