Rewiring The Dash Cluster, Keepin' It Real

[ShowaBraun]

All right, so I'm not some sort of electrical genius, but I know, as I'm sure most, if not all of you know that the gauge cluster foil plastic sheet shtuff that VW chose to use in the eighties was complete garbage. I'm sure it was a leap in innovation at the time but really, what's wrong with good ol' wires? Oh yeah, stamping out flexible circuit boards is cheaper than paying someone to make wiring harnesses. So anyways, I got real fancy with some of those good old copper wires and made myself a harness.

I was inspired by this thread highlighting that GW was going to make a stab at a dash harness and knew immediately that I could do something better.
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=564960&highlight=dash+cluster+gowesty

In that thread was a referral to a guy named Jarrett that had rewired his dash using conductors and jacketing from Cat-5 cable, I liked how he used a circuit board for his resistors, so I borrowed that idea.
http://www.kpcnsk.com/?p=138

There was also mention of a connector board for sale which made interfacing with the original connector pretty easy, pointed out by ragnarhairybreeks and available from David Marshall.
http://www.fastforward.ca/engineconversion/

My gauge cluster was some sort of abomination, having an 83.5 Westy means I was extremely fortunate to have the ever so useful analog clock for making sure I could get from 0 to 60 in at least 6 minutes for posterity. So first order was to source an early VW tach and get it in the right spot, plus fixing all of the damaged plastic bits on the guage cluster itself. Time to get handy with the dremel tool and the plastic epoxy.

The original setup, and terrible green sheet.

The "new" MotoMeter tach out of an '82 Scirocco

A little trimming and it drops into place but needs a little something more

Comparing the differences between the clock and the tach

Time for epoxy

Grafting, dremeling, and epoxying brings the cluster back into shape

All that stuff had to cure up so I started on the electrical and made a circuit board containing all the resistors, diodes, and terminals I would need for making a clean harness.

And now I've got to pick my wife up from work and have a beer, into the Caddy and down the hill I go, Cheers!

To Be Continued...

Ps. I'll be editing this again and adding a parts list for anyone considering doing it themselves.
_________________
__________________________
83.5 Westy 2.2 Subie
98 Outback 2.5
80 Caddy 1.6TD
66 912

[spacecadet]

Awesome.
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1990 Vanagon GL 2.1 Automatic (Sold)
1968 Ford F250(Current)

[Jake de Villiers]

Wow - great work SB!
_________________
'84 Vanagon GL 1.9 WBX
'86 Westy Weekender Poptop/2.5 Subaru/5 Speed Posi/Audi Front Brakes/16 x 7 Mercedes Wheels - answers to 'Dixie'
@jakedevilliersmusic1
http://sites.google.com/site/subyjake/mydixiedarlin%27
www.crescentbeachguitar.com
www.thebassspa.com

[ShowaBraun]

All right, drank some beers, caught some coho's out in the Strait, set up a new job this morning, time for round two. Oh, and wouldn't you know I start a job utilizing 22/12 multi-conductor cable the week after I wire my dash cluster complaining about how I don't have enough different color wires, maybe next time, oh well.

So where were we, oh yeah, terrible green plastic flexible circuit board annihilation. Anyway, I made a circuit board with resistors and a diode, and eventually in later pictures you'll notice I installed a couple wire jumpers across the board so that I had locations on the board to terminate power for the lights and whatnot. If you pay really close attention you'll notice that there are wires terminated on terminals across from each other without anything in between, that's the sixth cluster light and I haven't decided what I'm going to do with it yet, but probably put an indicator for driving lights or fog lights or the flux capacitor. For reference on these resistors check the Bentley, it will tell you mostly what they are, what they're for and what their resistances are.

80-84

This is mostly true, fact checking is needed, the resistors it shows are indeed there and they do what it says, but there are holes in the knowledge they're kickin.' Between R1 and R2 is a 20ohm resistor that feeds the middle pin of the voltage regulator on one side and joins R1 going back to ground on it's other side, and between R5 and R6 is a diode which is involved with the alternator indicator light. You'll notice on my circuit sheet that there is a blank above the diode, this is a resistor spot for the sixth indicator light.

The photo again for reference

I relabeled them from top to bottom on my schematic that I drew up and used for wiring:
R1 - 470 Ohm - High Beam
R2 - 20 Ohm - Voltage Regulator
R3 - 470 Ohm - Oil Pressure
R4 - 470 Ohm - OXS or Check Engine
R5 - 150 Ohm - Alternator (They say Voltage Regulator, eh, loosely)
R6 - 470 Ohm - Alternator
D1 - Diode - Alternator
R7 - 470 Ohm - Turn Signal
R8 - Unknown - Unknown

And closer up, but looking from the other side of the sheet

[/img]

The tracings are pretty easy to follow, make a schematic and just think of all those traces as wires and you'll be set. The Scirocco cluster tracing was uber complex and I had to follow it to find out how to wire the guages I was using, I'd hate to rewire that dash.

It should be noted that the pins on the terminal strip of the resistor board that I made, although the right spacing, were the wrong diameter for the PCB holes, I used a file and filed them down until they fit, about five minutes per side. These terminals are removable from the board without removing the wires, If I want to remove the board I can pop the terminals out, unscrew the board, change out whatever and reinstall.

I harvested a lot of plastic off of the Scirocco cluster for fixing my cluster but I also harvested threaded plastic bits for making standoffs for the resistor board. The aftermath:

Standoffs made to, as we say in the trades, "follow building lines," I picked the straight line of the vertical sides of the clusters to be perpendicular to.

They also come down in the front to allow more room as the cluster cover comes down in the front also, here the glue is setting up for the standoffs.

Continuing eliminating green plastic interfacing I made a connector for the voltage regulator out of this three terminal connector and the pins that it uses to land on a circuit board.

With Voltage regulator.

Next project was the warning/indicator lights. This was a little difficult and I really empathized with people soldering jumpers in to make up for burnt out traces. On later model Vans there are plastic conncectors for these lights, for us early guys there's little metal terminals that stand out from the sheet for the LED's to terminate on, there are some common points on this sheet, but I wanted electrical reliance on the sheet gone so I soldered in dedicated wires to each terminal.

Made a notch in the housing for the wire harness to exit.

Fits pretty good, don't mind the LED colors, making some changes to that anyway, blue high beam LED, etc.

Once I was super positive my wiring schematic was correct I cut off the surrounding sheet so that the remaining plastic only served to hold the LED terminals in place.

Last item, but definitely not least was creating a way to get away from the manner in which the illumination lights were terminated using the sheet, well, cause they obviously suck, I had been resorting to putting a headlamp down on the dash to illuminate the gauges lately because I had given up on repairing the mofos. I wanted something solid, beefy amounts of metal, so off to the junkyard I went to find something suitable to graft to the existing housings. I decided I would try my luck on the same genus and hit gold on the first VW I looked at, a MKIII Golf. Come to find out all the MKIII cars used these same housings on the gauge clusters, so take rarity out of the equation. I picked up three for a buck a piece and headed home pleased as punch.

The cluster all wired up waiting for the final pieces.

The lighting solution

One ready for epoxy, an example incandescent, and the original MKIII cluster bit ready to be dissected.

Closeup

This is important, the original housing opening has to be enlarged so that the led does not bind when you twist it into place.

Centering marks for gluing, notice the chamfered edge on the bottom of the donor MKIII piece, makes for a tight and strong fit.

Soldered, pre heat shrink, one could theoretically shape the metal bits in order to use crimp-on female spade connectors.

Installed on the Speedo.

All installed, I used different terminal orientations on all of them for organization, aesthetics, whatnot, and made the hot terminal the least likely to be accidentally touched during live open heart surgery operations, which is to say, on the bottom, just like the ground on a wall plug is supposed to be oriented to the top, weird huh?

All wired up, ring terminals crimped and heat-shrunk to gauge wires, heat-sink installed on voltage regulator (harvested it off some old controls at work)

The whole shebang

More to come, have to upload some more pics and put together the parts list, plus some new ideas I already came up with for making it even better.
_________________
__________________________
83.5 Westy 2.2 Subie
98 Outback 2.5
80 Caddy 1.6TD
66 912

[GreenMachineVW]

I have sooooo wanted to do something like this, and this might be the push I need to get me started! Once we get the parts list, all we will need is a weekend workshop at the local Vetco for the Seattle folks!

Thanks so much, ShowaBraun, for this wonderful tutorial!

[phlogiston]

cool project. thanks for taking the time to document it so well.

i was initially confused how you got the donor light housings to fit, but now i realize you just grafted the bulb support part onto your existing housings. clever! i assume that LED replacements are available for the jetta bulb style as well.

it's gonna be nice having a tach! i just fixed my coolant temp gauge over the weekend and can attest that every extra gauge makes driving more fun.

[ShowaBraun]

Few more detail pictures.

Front with Scirocco tach, no indicator light graphics installed, have to make my own, seems as though the stock position for the OXS light on early models was on the right bottom corner and late models it moved to the left bottom.

Back of the tach, had to clip a ground that I accidentally had wired over to the next gauge, I guess one mistakes not bad.

Superbrightleds.

Different angle on the resistor board.

Interface connector from fastforward, nice product.

Bottom side of my board, resistor leads wrapped around terminal pins and soldered at pin and through-hole.

Important tools, I had a soldering gun, but that's overkill, this 25 watt soldering pen is just right for this kind of work (and cheap). The heat gun is overkill, I use it for doing heat shrink on four lug splices on 1000 kcmil conductors, you could use a hair dryer or a carefully wielded flame for this little stuff.

Read up on solder for PCB's this seemed to be a good choice and worked very well. The right solder is important.

Next, parts...
_________________
__________________________
83.5 Westy 2.2 Subie
98 Outback 2.5
80 Caddy 1.6TD
66 912

[ShowaBraun]

[ShowaBraun]

[ShowaBraun]

Instrument lights for the new cluster.

Old incandescent from the MKIII donor, regular powered led, super powered led, all have B8.4D bases and are pretty short, perfect fit for the housing, the last one is an idea I had for using a prewired socket (available from Superbrightleds also) but it is too long after the twist-catch, although one could carve an appropriate hole for it into the side of the vanagon housing (the white piece on-top of each guage) and it would end up just about centered. All these choices.

_________________
__________________________
83.5 Westy 2.2 Subie
98 Outback 2.5
80 Caddy 1.6TD
66 912

[GreenMachineVW]

As for the lighting, I considered using the GoWesty automatic transmission bulb holders, as they fit into the stock holders, and have male terminal ends already.

http://www.gowesty.com/ec_view_details.php?id=3588&category_id=&category_parent_id=

They are long, but could be trimmed and the terminal ends bent 90 degrees.

[ShowaBraun]

Resources List:

Tools Used -
Heat Gun (substitute hair dryer)
Soldering Pen (25W) I bought a Weller from Radioshack for $16.99 http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3086618
Wire Strippers
Side Cutters
Dremel Tool (buy this if you don't have one, free your mind)


Supplies -

Junkyard Stuff -
Spare Cluster (old VW of some sort, not necessary but it helps when fabbing stuff, Pick-N-Pull)
MKIII Jetta or Golf instrument light housings (get two, three for mistakes, Pick-N-Pull)

Interwebs/Store -
470 Ohm Resistors - 2 Packs (I used 1/2 watt stuff, 1/4 watt would work, but price difference is negligable)
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062320
150 Ohm Resistor - 1 needed but you get 5
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062316
20 Ohm Resistor - I harvested mine from the Scirocco but here's one
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=12554224
Diode - 1N4004 - 1 needed
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2036270
Heat shrink tube - Not necessary but you are going to all this trouble, make it nice, I had this stuff laying around:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102875&clickid=prod_cs
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2104090&clickid=prod_cs
PCB - 5.08mm pitch - I found this to be just right, same one Jarrett used
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?produc...RadioShack
Terminal Blocks - 5.08mm pitch - I used 4 6pole blocks, you can break it down however you like, could use 2 12pole blocks, make sure the pitch is the same:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=18108876
Terminal Block PCB Connector - 5.08mm pitch - 12 pole, this gets soldered to the board, the terminal blocks plug into it:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=18191146
Terminal Block - 3 Pole - For voltage regulator, there are a lot of different choices here, this is the one I used:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?produc...rValue=NTE
Terminal Block Pins - 3 Pole - These would normally be soldered to a PCB and the previous block would terminate to them but I just soldered to them and plugged them into the back of the block:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=18191166
Solder
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?produc...lue=Solder
Plastic Epoxy
LED's - Standard strength B8.4d for the MKIII bits
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/subminiature-bulbs/b8-led-bulb--instrument-panel-led/222/
Cockpit Converter - The no fuss no muss way
http://www.fastforward.ca/engineconversion/

Literatures
Bentley
Jarrett's Page - Has wiring diagram for late models, wiring efficiency could be changed/improved but he's done the hard part connecting the dots:
http://www.kpcnsk.com/?p=138
Old Volk's Home Pin-Out for the white connector, very useful:
http://www.oldvolkshome.com/late_van_cluster_install.pdf


The Past, The Present, The Future
http://www.jammaboards.com/store/classic-jamma-fingerboard-stick-fb-1.html
_________________
__________________________
83.5 Westy 2.2 Subie
98 Outback 2.5
80 Caddy 1.6TD
66 912

[ShowaBraun]

[LandSailor]

Great write up!

I am concerned with the substitution of a 1/2W resistor for what appears to be the 1W gray resistor, though. R4, I believe. (at work, so just a cursory glance)

[Jake de Villiers]

Great tutorial - thanks! I have the feeling that we'll all need to bypass the blue foil at some point in the future...
_________________
'84 Vanagon GL 1.9 WBX
'86 Westy Weekender Poptop/2.5 Subaru/5 Speed Posi/Audi Front Brakes/16 x 7 Mercedes Wheels - answers to 'Dixie'
@jakedevilliersmusic1
http://sites.google.com/site/subyjake/mydixiedarlin%27
www.crescentbeachguitar.com
www.thebassspa.com

[ShowaBraun]

[ShowaBraun]

Scanned my old guage face and edited these up, only black and white, no greyscales and correct scale, just print them out if you need them.

Flux Capacitor and Check Engine Light

Late Model Check Engine Light

Early Model Check Engine Light

_________________
__________________________
83.5 Westy 2.2 Subie
98 Outback 2.5
80 Caddy 1.6TD
66 912

[ShowaBraun]

Well, I offered up a little too soon, had to change the feng shui of the bottom row for alignment in the window, went through all of them and made amendments. Some wise individual also suggested that I make a fog light indicator version, I had intended to do this but the lust for a flux capacitor had overridden completion of that task. More grayscale sneaks into it everytime I save it as a jpeg but I can't tell when I print it so I guess I'll just deal, should have chose a different format, oh well.

_________________
__________________________
83.5 Westy 2.2 Subie
98 Outback 2.5
80 Caddy 1.6TD
66 912

[phlogiston]

nice!

how are you printing these? i know i'd just head into work and load up some acetate (transparency sheets) into the laser printer... otherwise i guess it's a trip to kinkos?

[rlamb]

Thanks so much for taking the time to post all this! I may try this this winter, and if not, definitely the following one.
_________________
1984 Westfalia - Ford Cologne 2.8L conversion
2003 Passat GLX Wagon (4Motion)