Re: BTDT and need advice.

[Elliott Potter <epotter@abraxis.com>]

Todd Young wrote:
> 
> 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. 

BTDT...there's not nearly enough room to do this without totally
removing
the panel.

> 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. 

??? You mean you bought bulbs and put them in the old sockets, right? 
I'm
not sure how one would solder these in unless the new bulbs had pigtail
leads
on them.  The bulbs pull right out of the sockets.

> 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. 

Don't recall black ones...I've got green ones for the warning lights,
orange
ones for the instruments/guages, and blue ones for turn signals/hi beam
indicator.
I could be mistaken, though.......

> 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.

It may be a while before I get to this...I've got 5 other web pages that
are
all waiting in line, and I haven't been in the office for 5 weeks :(

> 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.
 
The light with it's own separate wires is the airbag light, it's the one
in
in the middle (to the right of the battery light).  It should stay on
for
8 seconds or something and then go out.  I don't know exactly what will
happen
if you put a bulb in the actual bulb spot for the airbag light, but it
could
be the cause of the weirdness with the coolant light.
***BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL WITH THE AIRBAG LIGHT!!!***  If the black socket
with
this bulb breaks or the bulb breaks, you're SOL.  The bulb is 1.2w,
non-removeable
as far as I know.  The bulb/socket/wiring combo isn't even a dealer
part...no
one can find it, and it has no part number.  It could be part of the
airbag
MIR harness, I'm looking into that now.  BTW, any Atlanta/GA listers
should avoid
Jim Ellis (have I said this before?)...they broke this, superglued it,
broke it again, and left it for me (they take no responsibility for it).

So anyway, switch the airbag and battery bulbs and see what happens.
--
Elliott
 
> --
> 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/