Club 80-90 Forums

Smcknighty wrote: If its mostly not broke dont try to fix it..

Yes....I have taken the decision not to tinker....the thought of snapping that brittle blue foil fills me with dread.

The cluster sits on my kitchen side taunting me as I type....but I must have a van that drives!

This is the last niggle to fix before camper van nirvana....ish.
So I am playing it safe.

....which leads me neatly onto.....

Just what have I fixed with the 2 x earth leads I put new ends on and connected to the crown???
Well I believe that all the lights on the cluster appear to be a whole lot brighter.
????

think i might try changing the Voltage regulator....

Any recommendations?

Have you tried sticking 12v and ground into the gauges when they are out of the vehicle (i.e. on your kitchen table).

The pin out for your dash should be available somewhere (anyone?) - Haynes/Wiki.
If you can try that and see what the needle does - if it still goes full clockwise you will at least know that the problem is within the bit you have on your kitchen table (and not something in the van).

I dont have a tachometer so I'm not sure exactly how they function but they are driven off a pulsed grounding of a wire - so I wonder what the effect would be if that wire were permanently grounded (i.e. the wire has corroded and made contact with a metal part of the vehicle) - would the tacho see that as a 'very' fast pulse rate and hence give you what you see.

My guess would be that it is not the regulator as you would be seeing problems with the temp/fuel gauges if that was the case (probably)

Anyway - try wiring up the gauges on the kitchen table and report back on the results.

I think you are correct about the regulator effecting the fuel and temp gauges.

I will try your suggestion of wiring 12 volts on the table, that's a great idea, thanks.

My neighbor down the road cannot find his spare cluster, so I cannot test it that way. (I was just going to wack his one in and see)

I took all the wires from the coil off one by one to see which one was driving the Tacho, and got no needle drop, which I wasnt expecting TBH.