BTDT and need advice.

[Todd Young <tyoung@wamnet.com>]

OK, my turn to ask for advice.
Car: '93 90S V6 5sp man

This weekend I removed the instrument cluster, the goal was to replace
the bulb that lights up the outside temp readout. Yeah, right. I was
going to just tilt it out some and replace a bulb and put it back. Ended
up pulling the entire cluster completely out of the car and taking it
inside. Turns out the temp readout has an internal bulb, lucky for me
[us] it's the same 12Volt, 60mAmp bulb available at Radio Shack [for us
USA guys]. So I soldered in the replacement, and figured while I'm at it
I'll do a continuity check on all the bulbs in the dash. Before I pulled
it, all the bulbs worked except the temp readout, while checking I found
two dead bulbs. Had the SO stop at the VW dealer on her way for a hair
cut, still cost me $4 a bulb for the orange ones. I've got some orange,
some black, some green, and some blue. The blue ones seem to be the
brightest and are used in the turn signals and the Hi-Beam indicator.
The orange ones are for illumination the gages. and the black and green
ones are for warning lights. I took pictures of the front and back of
the instrument cluster and made note of what each bulb does and what
color it should be [at least how it was in my car]. So this info will be
available once the film gets developed; I'll probably send it over to
Elliot Potter for him to add to his web site.

Now for the advice part. Since I put the cluster back in, the "battery"
light stays on upon initial start up, until I rev the engine. Sometimes
the "coolant" light flashes, until I rev the engine. The weird thing
about the "battery" light, is that it has it's own pair of wires running
to a bulb socket that just hooks into the cluster, so why would pulling
the cluster affect it? I tried resetting the computer, it didn't change
anything.

I'm getting more paranoid as I sit and think about this, I'm wondering
if I plugged that seperately wired socket into the wrong hole, and it's
not really the battery light that should be lighting up, but something
else, I can't remember what is supposed to be right next to the "battery
light". Guess I should pull out the owners manual and check.

Comments? Ideas? Probably my first step should be to get some Stabilant
and pull the cluster again and put some on all the contacts.

--
Todd Young              WAM!NET Inc.
tyoung@wamnet.com       6100 West 110th Street
612-886-5051            Bloomington, MN 55438-2664
800-585-1133 ext.5051   http://www.wamnet.com/