Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 22:02:52 -0700
Reply-To: Damon Campbell <damoncampbellvw@YAHOO.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Damon Campbell <damoncampbellvw@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: '84 to '85 tach upgrade write-up
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I like tachometers. They do cool things when you drive along, and as a bonus, they tell you what your engine is doing. Now most of you with your “modern” vanagons (all snooty with your 2.1L engines) have come to take this for granted. It was time I got one myself.
Here is my story:
The guys at BusLab (new shop in Berkeley, CA), hooked me up with an instrument cluster out of an ’85, which was the perfect replacement for my ’84 because everything was a straight swap (something about additional sensor lights on a 2.1L). All you have to do is pop open the little 14-pin connector and start swapping wires around (I labeled mine first just so I could remember later on what was what). Here is the pin swap list –the ’85 pin location and then the old pin location from ’84 (and then description)
’85 ’84 Description
1 3 Instrument Panel Light/Dimmer
2 4 Headlight Hi-Beam indicator
3 5 Voltage Stabilizer
4 2 *Emergency Flash warning light
5 7 Clock
6 6 Coolant Temperature Gage
7 8 Fuel Gage
8 9 Ignition Switch
9 12 **TACHOMETER!!!
10 14 Turn Signal Indicator Light
11 13 Alt. Warning light
12 none blank
13 10 Oil Pressure Warning Light
14 11 Oxy Sensor elap mile ind. Light
* I just ran a jumper between (new) terminals 2&3 to mimic what is going on in the ’84 flex circuit board (look where the connector plugs in and you can see the two traces connect together). Don’t tell anyone, but I just used a bit of paperclip that was already there from the PO :-)
** Hook this up at the ignition coil (the only other free terminal), and run all the way up to the front. Find where the wire coming out of the new terminal 9 ends in a 2pos plug and insert new tach wire there (you’ll have to come up with the male insertion pin)
I ran the tach wire under the van using a split flex conduit (something like $2.00 for 10ft at harbor freight), tie-wrapping along the way following the existing wiring harness for the brake lights, etc. Did have to make a small detour around the gas tank, though.
Works great, and now I have a working tach that replaced the broken clock (and a digital clock to boot!)
Overall, with the exception of running the wire under the van, this was a very easy mod… there might be simpler ways of running the wire, but I took this opportunity to install the headlight relays and ran wires from the alternator for that, too.
Hope this helps someone out there.
-Damon
p.s. props to David Beierl, who I am mostly repeating, but have made a couple small changes to, and simply presented information in a way more useful to me.
'84 Westy
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