Club 80-90 Forums

Hi all.

I have the classic MkIII golf 2E petrol engine into a 1.9 diesel van conversion (1991 van). The conversation was done before I brought the van 7 years ago and everything up until this point has worked fine re the dashboard. It has a late petrol dashboard (analog clock, oil pressure buzzer, NO rev counter, NO yellow diesel light)

The blue PCB behind the dashboard has - as it often does - worn away where the basic dash light bulbs connect at the top, so my garage suggested getting an upgrade kit from campervan culture to hard wire the whole dash. They brought a CMBA kit.

However, since they have fitted the new hardwire kit the coolant temperature gauge, fuel gauge and analog clock no longer work!! All three worked perfectly fine with the original blue PCB.

Any suggestions about what might have gone wrong here. - they are claiming it's bad luck and the guages/clock have all just broken by chance together, even though they don't look damaged in any way and worked fine when I drove the van to them.


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I would hazard a guess that is absolute BS.

"they are claiming it's bad luck and the guages/clock have all just broken by chance together"

It’s possible the rocker switches ( if it’s that particular kit) aren’t positioned correctly, it’s also entirely possible the kit is faulty , also possibly they have the wrong year kit ?

davidoft1 wrote: ↑10 Aug 2026, 19:07 It’s possible the rocker switches ( if it’s that particular kit) aren’t positioned correctly, it’s also entirely possible the kit is faulty , also possibly they have the wrong year kit ?

I'm pretty sure the Year of the kit is right as it seems to match up with what the van had before. (Late kit, 1991 van). How do you think the rocker switches might be causing an issue?

I will have to take a look at the circuit diagram to see where the commonality it on the dash , the chances of the guages failing at all is low and all at the same time would be unlikly unless an error caused them to fail. 

I feel like this is such a common engine conversion that someone else must have done it before and also fitted the hard wire dash upgrade?

I can't see any reason why the hard wire kit wouldn't work with an engine conversion - but I wonder if I'm missing something????