Funny that you wrote abou this today, as one of the things I did today was take the instrument cluster completely out to clean the dash light and other electrical contacts on it.  (The clock light goes on intermittently, and I just wanted to see what the status was in there.  Also, when I pulled out the tiny lightbulbs, I ended up cleaning them (They all had a bit of haze on the outside of the bulbs.) I expect the dash lights to be just a tad brighter now, even though it has never bothered me.

About that speedo backing plate. I did not take mine apart, but I noticed one of the screws looked as though it had melted the plastic on the backing plate, The other three was holding the plate on well enough.  What about fabricating a new one.  Is the plate simply covering the internals or are the internals attached to it?

We should get together. It looks as though you live near me and obviously we both try to work on our vans ourselves. (I too have not had great luck with local mechanics...)

Mark Garcia
Alhambra, CA
1987 Vanagon Westfalia (for going slow)
2000 Passat 1.8T 5SPD(for going fast)
1981 Vespa P200E (for just going!)

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