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Date:         Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:14:43 -0600
Reply-To:     Tom Buese <tombuese@COMCAST.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Tom Buese <tombuese@COMCAST.NET>
Subject:      Re: Need Instrument Cluster Foil: '84 Wolfsburg Westy/Lending the
              westy for Burning Man
Comments: To: Steve Williams <sbw@SBW.ORG>
In-Reply-To:  <201108161953.p7GJraN47266@sbw.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Not to high jack the thread, but the more critical issue is you are lending your westy to someone who has never driven a vanagon before, AND letting her take it to Burning Man? LOL!

She must be very good looking, really smart, & a great friend or ?

Having the tach work for BM is the least of your issues-You need to Playaproof the westy 1st.

YMMV,

Mr. BZ-wish I was going again Showerman

On Aug 16, 2011, at 1:53 PM, Steve Williams wrote:

> I still need that foil. A lister emailed me he might be able to find > one. If you can, I'm still in the market, thanks! > > Here's the rest of the story: > > Van Cafe replaced my leaking master brake cylinder. When I arrived > to pick up the Westy, they apologized: Bringing the van around for > me, they noticed the tach wasn't working. > > There was an old, badly-done repair to the foil at the tach > plug. They had disturbed that repair in removing the cluster for the > brake cylinder R&R. (They offered to give me some consideration for > the trouble, but I declined. It's not their fault the old repair was > so crappy.) > > They hunted around for a serviceable foil, but no luck. > > They showed me the problem and said they have a guy that can repair > the foils, but he's only around on Fridays. I was hoping to be in > L.A. by today. > > I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron, so I asked if I could camp in > a shady spot behind their shop and try to fix it myself. I always > travel with my butane soldering iron, lots of electrical tools, > several kinds of wire, and so on. > > Why not just leave it until I can find a foil? A friend is taking my > Westy to Burning Man in ten days or so. She hasn't driven a Vanagon > before, so I think it's important to have the tack working for her, if I can. > > I spent four hours yesterday afternoon trying one thing after another > to tack the foil traces to the plug, without luck. The foils just > kept breaking, or the mylar melted and the traces shorted. > > I stayed with family overnight, and this morning returned to Van Cafe > to try again. In the end, I was able to strip the mylar back, > freeing half an inch of each trace, and tack-solder some thin wire to > the traces. I secured the wires to the tach case as best I could > with strips of gaffer tape. It doesn't take much flexing to break > those traces. > > Then I took the pins out of the connector, trimmed the remaining > mylar, scraped them up good so they'd take solder, and tack-soldered > the other ends of the wires to the pins. Put the pins back into the > plug, plugged it in, then secured the wires with more gaffer tape. > > We stuck the cluster in the dash, and it worked. Amazing. But it > was six hours of painstaking work. Now that I've done it, it'd > probably take three hours, especially using much finer wire than I had with me. > > But there's no way it'll work for long. Gaffer tape isn't > structural. As hard as I tried, I couldn't completely immobilize the > wires. Anyway, vibration can easily break the traces, I think. > > So I really need that foil. But for now, it's working.


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