When I bought my 1998 Vanagon GL the light switches did not work at all.
http://members.home.net/holisticdream/vanagon1989.htm
I paid the VW Dealer to fix it and if I had known how easy it was I would
have done it myself. Apparently the switches need cleaning every so often.
Just take them out and scrape and clean and lubricate. They get stuck over
time I was told. It took him about 5 minutes to clean them but they still
charged me full price "by the job."

Try it and pmail me to let me know if that fixed the problem.

By the way I am very happy with the VW Dealer and their prices. It is just
that I was so new to Vanagon ownership back then that I did not know how
simple things were to fix. This list has saved me hundreds if not over  a
thousand so far.

William P.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Stegman" <stegmanmj@HOTMAIL.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 1:35 PM
Subject: Interior Lights not working

> Hi All,
> The interior lights in my 88 will come on when I flip the switch up or
down.
>   However, the lights won't turn off when the door is closed and the
switch
> is in the up position (or down for that matter.)  The only way to get the
> light off is to put the switch in the middle position.
>
> When I have the engine on and the drivers door open, I get the chimes, so
> the van "knows" the door is open...
>
> Any ideas where to look?
> Thanks.
> Matt
> Cincinnati
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com