Jim,

This may be a long shot, but your symptoms are very similar to what I saw on my TD
when I first fired it up on the weekend. At first I noticed the GP LED was flaky, as
were some of the other LEDs. At this point, I was cranking the new rebuild for the
first time, so oil pressure was my primary focus, and it was fine. I assumed my weak
battery or a bad ground at the cluster was the problem. After I got it going, the
problem continued, and the tach was going haywire as well. After checking various
things at the cluster, I checked the alternator, and it turned out my voltage regulator
was loose, causing a poor contact. Tightened up, and all is well.

On 11 Sep 2005 at 18:57, Jim Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET> wrote:

> I was driving back home at night after a 400 mile errand last thursday
> in my '90. During the day, my temp needle had run high, say one needle
> width over the LED, and the light flashed all the time after I stopped
> for gas or something. I pulled over and checked the coolant lever, it
> was fine. Figured my water pump might be failing me.
>
> However, as it got dark and I turned on my lights, a good deal of
> dashlight weirdness followed. With my lights on and the brightness
> rheostat (or whatever) wheel down low, my tach read about 1000 rpm low,
> one of the other leds came on bright (the bright lights, I think) and
> the temp needle rose a bit.
>
> Turn the adjuster to full brightness, the temp LED came on dimly, the
> oil LED would shine brightly and the bright light LED would go out.
>
> Through all this I had no dash illuminance at all, totally dark.
>
> So the next day I pop the shroud off and unplug and then replug the
> switch receptacle. Everything worked.
>
> Last night the same thing happened again, and the unplug-replug trick
> didn't work.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jim
>

Shawn Wright
http://zuiko.sls.bc.ca/~swright
'85 Jetta D
'88 Westy 1.6TD 5 speed
 (see progress at http://members.shaw.ca/vwdiesels)
'82 Diesel Westy