At 08:29 PM 7/31/2003, mark drillock wrote: >blinking. I have seen blinking and needle weirdness caused by the sender >wire being routed too close to the exhaust pipe near the thermostat >housing on a 2.1. The insulation had melted through and whenever >vibration caused the bare wire to touch the pipe the led would flash. If >it touched solidly for long enough the temp needle would rise too but >when you pulled over to the side of the road it would drop to normal and >stop blinking. Drove my friend crazy. Right -- only takes a very short signal to trigger the blink which then continues for several seconds regardless. >van. The blinking problem drove me batty until I noticed that her >alternator output voltage dropped completely at certain rpms. The led >blinking seemed to be rpm related too and was worse when the headlights >were on so I looked at grounds first. Finally I replaced the alternator >and the blinking episodes ended. Too bad I couldn't look at the dash >voltage with a scope as I bet it would have shown some drops that fooled >the led circuit into thinking that the key had been turned of and back >on. It's very sensitive to input voltage -- I'm not even sure it will get all the way down to 9.5 without starting to blink. 9.499 maybe... <g> The newer ones I've seen have tantalum timing caps instead of aluminum, has to help -- but I don't think they cleaned the boards enough to handle humidity gracefully, and of course as the cap gets leakier it takes less shunt resistance to upset everything. d -- David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/ '84 Westy "Dutiful Passage" '85 GL "Poor Relation" |
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