Date:         Tue, 27 Apr 1999 20:14:15 -0700
Reply-To:     Mark Mages <wasserbox@YAHOO.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Mark Mages <wasserbox@YAHOO.COM>
Subject:      Shoddy German Workmanship?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I just pulled apart my instrument cluster today, and I
found an interesting surprise... part of the
instrument housing is melted.... one whole corner of
the speedo mounting box is melted right off.

I looked around in there with my flashlight, and I
couldn't find any evidence of any sort of electrical
fire, all the wireing & other parts of the dash seemed
untouched - it looks almost like they melted it on
accident @ the factory, then bolted everything in.

I haven't had any electrical problems with it, and
can;t see anything that might've burned...

That brings up the question - the amount of damage
that was done to the housing, and the speedo was
untouched... that could mean a replaced speedo &
possibly incorrect mileage... any way to tell 100%?
all the record I have from the PO jive with the
current miles, but that leaves 1.5years and 15K and a
journey from michigan to Houston unaccounted for.  It
never seemed an unreasonable amount of miles, so I
never thought about it.

Anyways, I pulled the cluster apart & cleaned the
faces - WOW - taking 84K of dust & grime off makes a
lot of difference... I don't recommend doing this - it
isn't hard, but if you haven't done it before it can
be tricky.

Oh, and I inadvertently fixed my intermittant speedo
problems... seems some mysterious red paint was coated
around where the speedo clips in, and was preventing
it from seating tight all the time.

So the vanagon saga continues...

===
Mark

87 Westfalia Gl
84 Scirocco 8v

http://members.tripod.com/~jehanno

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