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