Date: Wed, 22 Nov 95 10:45:31 PST
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Dave Kautz <dkautz@hpsidms1.sid.hp.com>
Subject: Type III clock into Breadloaf
Thought I'd give the list a brief update on my campaign to make that empty
hole on the right hand side of my instrument cluster do something useful.
Now I know common list wisdom would say to put something to do with oil,
temperature or engine speed there but frankly I'm an idiot light kinda
guy <I once disconnected my speedometer cable to do some other work and
didn't notice the speedo wasn't working for two days> who trusts that the
engineers at VW had their thinking caps on when they designed the engine's
cooling system. And, since much of my daily activity involves ferrying
my kids to and from their many commitments, knowing what time it is is
useful to me. So I decided to look for a clock.
Several folks responded to my plea to the list, and I thank all of you, but
a real bus clock for my '74 was not forthcoming. Ron Van Ness, who has quite
the knowledge and expertise in these clock matters it turns out, offered up
a type III clock with the proper colorings and fonts at an attractive price.
A short while later, said clock was in my hands and last night I installed
it.
The easy way to do this is to buy a mounting bracket for putting the big
VDO tach in the same spot. Of course I didn't do this, since the bracket
costs $9 plus shipping. My time being worth nothing, I made a bracket out
of steel sheet and subsequently filed on it numerous times until it would
fit. At this point, I recommend buying the bracket. I added a thin piece
of rubber between the mounting bracket and the gauge <a small cross-section
o-ring filched from work> to provide some damping and to help prevent
the clock from rotating in it's mount.
There didn't appear to be wires in the harness for the clock so they had
to be fabricated too. I took the "full time" 12 volts from the headlight
switch <this is where the wiring diagram indicates it should come from
for the clock>, there is an empty live terminal there which made that
easy. A ground wire is also required - there are empty terminal tabs both
on the back of the clock and the dash panel. Getting the internal light
for the clock was more problematic since I really didn't want to hack and
splice my existing wiring harness to do so. I eventually put a terminal
doubler on the 4 way flasher switch which is in the vicinity <it has an
internally lit knob> and ran a wire of the correct color back to the clock
from there.
So how does it look? I'm gonna quiz some folks and see how long it takes
them to figure out it's not the real bus clock. The type III clock face
sits 8-10 mm deeper in the dash. The colors of the background, lettering
and needle, are very close. At night, the light level is similar but the
color of the light in the type III clock is a little more bluish. This may
only require a bulb change to rectify but I haven't looked into it yet.
Overall, a pretty straightforward installation with good results, I'd say.
Dave
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