Type 89 80 instrument cluster swap, wiper mechanism

[Tom Nas]

Hi all,

Today I finally swapped my 80's instrument cluster (base-spec, huge clock
instead of a tachometer) for the 'luxury version'. I'd been told that it's
a straight swap and that the car is prewired for the tach even if it didn't
come with one from the factory. This was indeed the case, and after I
swapped the speedos between clusters (my car passed 275k km today, whereas
the scrapyard car that yielded my cluster was at 172k and I'm proud of my
car's mileage) it went straight in with everything working perfectly. The
only thing I needed to fix was a couple of dead instrument lights (a
couple? Only three were actually working...) but now it's working fine.

That is- the LCD clock is not illuminated. This is that same unit as on the
type 44 fully electronic clusters. Does anyone know if that's easy to fix?

Two weeks ago, the windscreen wiper mechanism started squeaking badly.
After half an hour, the squeaking suddenly stopped and the lefthand wiper
started wiping my a-post and driver's door window. Hmmm, I guess 15 years
and 275,000 km puts some serious wear on that mechanism... as it was rather
rainy last week I needed the wipers a lot, and the worn-out mechanism
dragged the wiper blade over the 'screen rather crookedly, which made it
scratch my hitherto undamaged windscreen. @#@#$!%$%! I obtained another
used mechanism from the same car that yielded my instrument cluster,
cleaned and lubricated it (lithium grease) and exchenged mechanisms. This
is not really a difficult job on the type 89 but not easy either- you need
to figure out how the mechanism comes out and how it slides in again,
there's only one way to do it and there's not too much room to manoeuvre.
You need to adjust the wiper arms not only when stationary, but it took me
two runs to figure out how to install the arms so that they would not hit
each other or the a-post, the wind pushes the wipers further when you're
driving. Still not 100% perfect, but this mechanism is very quiet and
there's absolutely no play in it (you could pull the wiper arms up by about
60 degrees on the old mechanism, which nicely illustrates the play in the
arms).

I'm starting to get anal with this car (my daily beater, bought it for
$60), I even changed the sunroof crank for a better example- the
over-centre spring on mine was buggered which made it sag. The 'new' crank
makes it fit snugly in its recess when not in use and not rattle around in
your peripheral vision.

Anyway, another pretty productive day. Next project: installing a better
radio head unit, rewiring the whole install and playing with my new
ratcheting crimper. :-)

Tom