Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 10:26:53 -0400
Reply-To: Tom Stone <tstone8359@AOL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Tom Stone <tstone8359@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Strange Idea about retrofitting early Headlight Switch onto
late model Vanagon
In-Reply-To: <CANEuo0gAe+3F37CfEBmYGCQ+pvQw6H-2Cwhay+KkmC1biWeVrw@mail.gmail.com>
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Ken, my son has a '91 Vanagon Westy with a bad headlight switch. He lives in Florida and I live in Ohio. I went down for a visit in January and took his switch apart and cleaned it. His problem the first time was that the dimmer did not work. I ended up taking the dimmer parts from an older switch, installing them is his switch and making it work. After I left, the headlight part of the switch quit working. When I visited in April, I did not take the switch apart again. Instead, after consulting the wiring diagram, I ran a jumper between the two large pins on the socket and plugged the switch in on top of it. What this does, as far as I can tell, is provide an alternate source for power to the headlights. Now, when he turns on the key, the headlights are always on like a "modern " car. The dimmer switch works like it should and to date, I have seen no ill effects from the modification. He likes the fact that his headlights are always on when driving. Next time I go to Florida, I'll try your suggestion. Sorry I can't offer you a faulty '90-'91 switch to play with. So far, my '91 Carat switch is still working.
Tom
-----Original Message-----
From: kenneth wilford (Van-Again) <kenwilfy@COMCAST.NET>
To: vanagon <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Thu, May 16, 2013 9:33 am
Subject: [VANAGON] Strange Idea about retrofitting early Headlight Switch onto late model Vanagon
As many of your know the late model Vanagon (90-91) used a different
headlight switch than all of the earlier years. Not sure why VW waited
until the last year of production to address a wiring issue and change the
switch that had worked the entire life of the vehicle but that is beside
the point. If you have a 90 or 91 Vanagon, at some point the headlight
switch is going to go bad. Since there is no longer any being made (as far
as I know) the source for good used ones is small, I am thinking that we
need a work around.
So I was looking at a 91 Headlight switch this morning that is on a
customer's van. I held it up to a "normal" Vanagon headlight switch and
you can see that the prongs on the back are different. There are two extra
prongs one of which does nothing on the USA Vanagons and the other one
supplies power to the interior lighting, and cluster lighting circuit (any
thing that you can dim with that dimmer wheel on the switch is powered by
this extra wire). Anyway, I know folks were talking about splicing in the
harness and plug from an earlier Vanagon, but I think I have come up with
an even simplier idea. I think if you had the old, bad late headlight
switch, and a new early headlight switch, you could probably, just pop the
rear off, clean the circuit points inside, and swap it over to the new
"early" switch. That way you have a new dimmer, face and contacts, but the
rear of it with the plug in part, stays the same. This would mean a ready
supply of new switches as long as someone has the patience to pop these
apart and do the swap.
I would like to volunteer to check this out for folks. But I need a 91
Vanagon headlight switch to use as a donor. It should be bad to make the
experiment a real test. It just needs to have a good back on it. Pmail me
if anyone is interested in helping out with this projects. The part number
ends in "T" for the late switch that I need.
--
Thanks,
Ken Wilford
John 3:16
www.vanagain.com
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