[Vwdiesel] idle switch, diesel leak, oily engine block

[Sandy Cameron]

At 03:40 PM 1/2/04 -0800, you wrote:
 brakes are an awful lot
>cheaper and easier to replace than ANYTHING tranny
>related so i would rather put the wear on them. that's
>what they're there for.

Completely agree
>
>and that's really interesting about the upshift
>indicator. i didn't know what those switches were for.
>my indicator relay went bad and got shorted out. (or
>something else shorted and melted it - i don't know
>which went first.) so i pulled it out, and now the oil
>pressure light doesn't work. but i found a jumper on
>another car of mine in place of that car's upshift
>relay and played with it and found out that that's
>exactly what it's for! so that wiring goes thru there?

There are 2 pieces of idiocy buried in the instrument cluster that use
signals from:

1. The tach signal from the alternator

2. the oil pressure sender

3. The transmission switch

4. The 2 switches on the top of the pump, for idle and wide open 'throttle'

They are the low oil pressure alarm buzzer mounted behind the speedometer,
and the 'upshift' indicator mounted top center of the cluster.

LOPAB uses oil pressure and  tach, and keeps quiet below 2000rpm, but opens
the gate for alarm above 2000rpm if the oil pressure drops below a set
limit. If you have never heard it, the first time it sounds off, you will be
very puzzled by it. It is barely audible above cabin ambient noise, hard to
tell where it's coming from,  and is most likely to sound if you are lugging
along at 2001 rpm with thin oil and hot engine. It sounds like an old alarm
clock buzzer with laringitis. Most of the circuit is on the biscuit behind
the speedo. Mine will buzz occasionally when I'm towing my snomobile up a
shallow grade in 5th, in winter, with thin oil, and I should realy
downshift. Never seems to happen any other time, (summer oil?)

The LOPAB may only be used on turbos.

The upshift atrocity uses cues from the throttle switches, the tach signal,
and the tranny switch (on middle 80's A2's) It is locked out in 5th by the
tranny switch, but is operational in the other 4 gears

The throttle switches turn it off while coasting or flogging, but allow it
to blink at you with any throttle setting in between.

Sandy