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Date:         Thu, 16 May 2013 09:17:56 -0400
Reply-To:     "kenneth wilford (Van-Again)" <kenwilfy@COMCAST.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         "kenneth wilford (Van-Again)" <kenwilfy@COMCAST.NET>
Subject:      Strange Idea about retrofitting early Headlight Switch onto late
              model Vanagon
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

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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