Replacing the dashboard plastic PCB

[CJH]

I showed this photo to my son, and he asked me if I'm planning to upscale production. I told him I HAVE upscaled production - 2 kits in one evening! And now I have stock on the shelves.

Instructions nearly done - tomorrow evening's job.

[CJH]

Instructions almost complete. If you're in two minds about whether a DIY kit is right for you, please feel free to download the current draft of the instructions from here. There are a few bits that need further work, but it'll give you an idea of what's involved.

[slowcoach]

I think if you did want to upscale production, thered be quite a few samba members into trying it out, and they do love a good project or two. Having a DIY self assembly kit as well as the clustermaster kits fills both markets. Great work

[CJH]

I could certainly order the parts in in greater numbers, but there's no point in investing in a load of stock if there isn't enough demand. I have enough parts for around a dozen kits at the moment, and will see how they sell before making any rash decisions! There are a few steps that take a fair bit of my time, which I'm happy with for small numbers, but I'd want to avoid spending all my spare time crimping Dupont connectors and cutting cable sets to length (although I could quite happily watch the 3D printer churning out the bespoke parts all day long!).

[Sir Brixalot]

Thanks a lot for all this hard work. One less bit of my van to go wrong. Theres an old American song about a worker nicking car parts over years to build himself a new car which ends up being a hybrid of many different years. I think my van goings to be more new than old soon

[CovKid]

Have asked Ken at Van-Again to check out your kit Chris

He does use 80-90

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jon_ICyEp6g" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; - streams live every Friday night at 9pm

[CJH]

Thanks Ralph.

[Cobra88]

Hi Chris

Sorry if i have missed this answer

Will this kit allow me to fit a late cluster to an early van ?
Superb instructions btw

Rick

[slowcoach]

Yes, but you'd still Need to re order the pins in the van multiplug to a late spec order. But that's easy, I did a thread on doing that somewhere, I think it's linked to earlier in this thread.

[Cobra88]

Thanks Slowcoach

Ill go back and find thread

[CJH]

Will this kit allow me to fit a late cluster to an early van ?

Yes and no. Since the kit connects to the multiplug via an adapter board, it doesn't matter whether the binnacle has the older vertical connection or the newer horizontal connection. It will certainly allow you to connect all of the wires in your multiplug to their corresponding connections on the cluster, so you'll have a fuel gauge, temperature gauge, clock, illumination bulbs, and all the central LEDs. But an early multiplug probably won't have a tachometer wire or a higher pressure oil switch, so you'd need to run a wire from your alternator (diesel) or coil (petrol) for the tachometer, and unless you've had an engine swap you'll only have the lower pressure oil switch, so the dynamic oil pressure system (DOPS, or 'buzzer of doom') on the late dash isn't going to work.

You don't have to re-order the wires in the multiplug with this kit - the idea is that you use the supplied 30cm lengths of wire and the 'fingers' adapter board to connect each used pinout in your multiplug to the corresponding input pin on the LED PCB. The supplied wires all match VWs original colours to aid with this. It doesn't matter what order the multiplug pins are in - take them all out and randomise them if you wish! - just make sure you identify which colour is which (using the tables in the guide) and connect them all to the labelled inputs on the PCB. If you run a wire from the engine bay to a tachometer, just connect it directly to the tachometer terminal on the PCB, bypassing the multiplug.

[CovKid]

Chris, as you know, I replaced the original dash plug with an ATX plug when I hardwired so decided before I start assembling your kit, I'll order in an 18-way Molex male & female connector. This will make a more consistent path in terms of wire colours. The additional pins will allow for extra connections should I need them

[CJH]

That makes sense - it'll be useful to have any extra wires connected directly to your Molex 'multiplug replacement'. I've been considering how to make use of the extra LEDs* - possibly using one as a visual indication of when the radiator fan is on, and maybe one as a trailer indicator repeater - but one issue is that they'd need their own easily detachable connection between the PCB and the vehicle. It's all very well having screw-down terminals on the PCB, but I don't really want to be fiddling with those every time I remove the dash. Everything else detaches easily via the multiplug adapter, but I don't have an easy way to add those extra circuits to the multiplug**, so I'll probably end up using blade terminals for the extra wires. Your approach of going through the Molex connectors would mean you only have to disconnect a single plug/socket to remove the dash.

*I've been toying with the idea of adding a small circuit to the PCB so that one of the spare LEDs could be used to indicate low fuel. I've found that the sender in the tank varies from 34 Ohms (full) to 168 Ohms (empty), so it should be be possible to add something to the board to trigger the LED when the resistance gets to, say, 155-160 Ohms. If my circuit design skills were better this ought to be easy - I'm thinking of maybe of a transistor to switch the LED, and a resistor to divide the voltage so that the transistor's base goes below 1V when the sender's resistance gets high enough.

**If anyone knows of a source of the spring terminals inside the original multiplug then I could use the spare pin locations for my extra circuits.

[CovKid]

A "dash blower left on" would be cool (excuse the pun) as an LED. Quite a few have followed my PWM blower conversion in recent months so that could be useful.

Yep, I'm keen to reach a point where the dash is literally plug n play as far as removing it. A 12 way molex may have been big enough but the extra connections may prove useful over time. The dash (as a whole) isn't the easiest thing to remove due to all the switches you have to press out

[Sir Brixalot]

Got the kit. Thanks