I left this out of my original post for clarity, but perhaps it's relevant to your situation: My Tach was also not working intermittently, and the reason was that the foil-like contact in the back had broken. That foil stuff was a bad idea: it flexes and breaks. The same thing happened to me on my 76 rabbit. Take a look at the foil contacts going to the tach, and you may see a place where it's bent/broken. You can carefully scrape away the plastic, and then re-solder the broken joint.

After doing that, and cleaning the grounds, most of my cluster problems went away.

However, I think the ODO problem is either a broken cable, or broken ODO. If your speedometer works, then the cable is probably fine.

I'd suggest you clean the grounds first. Although painful, this will then help you diagnose the actual cluster problems, if any.

On Feb 16, 2006, at 12:07 PM, Luke Sponholz wrote:

> I've been following this thread with rapt attention. I have > instrument > cluster problems as well, and I was wondering if the experts might > weigh in > on what they think might be the culprit. "Compost" is a vehicle I > acquired > from my folks. They had an instrument cluster failure at one point > and > ended up having a junkyard replacement installed. Here's the deal > with the > replacement: > > 1. Tach goes out intermittently. Usually it works fine, but it'll > drop to > 0 sometimes when driving. And then it'll come back occasionally. > No rhyme > or reason. > 2. When the tach goes out, the rest of the right side of the > cluster will > go out as well (usually, although recently I've been having just tach > failures). > 3. When the right side of the cluster is working, the temp gauge > seems > accurate. > 4. The gas gauge is really inaccurate. I wonder if it's a cluster > issue or > the sensor in the tank. When the tank is full, it reads pretty > close to > full. However, it drops not linearly and I end up showing in the > reserve > when I have as much as a 1/2-3/4 tank remaining. > 5. The odometer is stuck at 204242. The trip odo doesn't work > either. I'd > love to have a functioning odo again. > > Thanks, ladies and gents! > > -- > 1985 Brown Vanagon GL 4spd "Compost"