Fixing speedo and tacho by removing dash..

[VDubAL]

Does anybody know how complicated it is to fix a speedo and tacho from behind the dashboard on a Mark III Golf CL? I'm a little concerned about setting the airbags off!!... I have a Haynes manual which suggests dashboard removal is very difficult but I'm not sure how much of the dash would need to come off. I imagine the steering wheel will have to come out to make space...

The speedo and tacho work intermittently. Either they work when the car starts or they don't and the speedo needle sits at the bottom shaking...I've been told it's not the transducer in the engine bay. Have had a look at the part and all looks good...

Anyone done this before? Have heard MkIII electrics can be a bit of a problem...

[gpk_gti]

why dont you just pull out the instruments? why do you want to pull the whole dash as well?


ignition off,battery off,then disconnect the airbag.. reverse the procedure to re install.

mate,if you have no idea what you are doing,id suggest not to try it yourself!

[peedman]

its not complicated, only a small part of the dash needs to come out specifically the plastic piece that sits right infront of the instruments, the vents around it, the blank trim piece on the left of the wheel and thats it.

[ScienceVR6]

getting the cluster out is a peice of piss.

get a flat head screw driver, and pry out the little panel on the far right, then push in the button on the side of the head light swich, pull switch out. you will reveal a screw. undo it.go to the other side, pry out the large cover, unvale a screw, undo it.

pull cluster surround out towards you. WOLLAH!

Next.

undo screw that hold cluster in. Flod cluster down towards you. Flip levers that secure the looms to the cluster. Remove looms.

Cluster comes out.

Easy.

I have done this in the Autobarn carpark in under 2 minutes.

[peedman]

you forgot about the screws in the air vents.

[Peter Jones]

I have done this in the Autobarn carpark in under 2 minutes.

On your own car I trust!

Pete

[Bora Sport]

I did this job myself last weekend. I had to change the Vento cluster as it was doing 'the dance of death' as Loon calls it. It is pretty much as described above although not quite as easy to do as ScienceVR6 makes it sound.

I had a bit of a struggle with getting the black cover out (the one that sits directly in front of the cluster). The trick there is to put your fingers on top of the dash and push up on the top of the cover with your thumbs or perhaps the other way around, thumbs on top. Imagine trying to grab hold of a shelf of say a book case. When this is out there are 2 screws (one on each side) to undo before you can tip the top of the cluster forward. There was not much slack in the harness to allow me to get my hand behind to unclip the connectors. And you don't have to mess with the air vents.

The only other clue is that the connectors at the back of the cluster have the push in pins in the middle of the long sides instead of at the ends of the connectors like most of the rest of the car.

[Golf Loon]

VDubAl. Sounds like early stages of the dance of death. It will work less and less often and eventually never.

Its the CPU chip and cant be repaired. New cluster. $550 from VW or second hand probably $150ish.

I have resoldered every joint on the board and it still doesnt work. I have also taken a couple of clusters to instrument repairers and they can fix em either.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. On the plus side they are easy to change and you dont need to remove the steering wheel.

[Mrk_Mickey]

Yeah man talk about troubles

Poor Steve Natoli when he sold me my car, the cluster was f***ed. He went through three to make ONE work!! and now my manual VR has an auto thing on the side (P,R,N,D,2,1) and it's got 70,000km less than it should

[VDubAL]

...Okay...Cheers for the advice. Might have a captain cook but sounds like replacement to me...

[The_Hawk]

Yeah man talk about troubles

Poor Steve Natoli when he sold me my car, the cluster was f***ed. He went through three to make ONE work!! and now my manual VR has an auto thing on the side (P,R,N,D,2,1) and it's got 70,000km less than it should

What you should have done (or can try now)... get a busted manual one, pull the screw out of the back to separate the back form the front, then swap the auto and manual front pieces over. Basically the only difference is the little extra bit of plastic that covers the auto selector. Thats what I did

You can see here in the old one the blank hole when I put the old cluster back together:



The new ones looks like a manual, but with that redundant unused auto bit underneath and as you know works fine.