> very cool and thanks for posting.  i have a question then a
> comment.  what is a decade box?

It's an electronics testing and prototyping tool. They make fancier ones
now, but the "classic" design is a box with two wire leads and a row of
10-position knobs, each numbered 0-9 (thus the name "decade box"). Far right
knob is ones, then going to the left it's tens, hundreds, thousands, etc.
You set the dials for (say) 3,5,0,0 and the two wire leads will have
3500ohms resistance between them.

 two things seem odd here first is that
> the vw tool wouldn't test the middle value only the upper and lower
> bounds.

Basically the only possible failures are "too high", caused by a partial
short, and "too low", caused by resistance from corrosion on the wire or
such. Each tends to be most obvious at opposite extremes.

  second it seems odd that with 35 ohms that its reading "hot", i
> guess one has to qualify what "hot" means is that the last little white
> bar or is that the gage all the way pegged.  if the gage is pegged that
> seems weird as that is what it does when you ground the lead.

I think what they mean by "hot" is the needle is just touching the solid
"danger" bar at the top, rather than pegging it like 0 ohms does.

>
> i think i shall call my local dealer and see if they have this tool they
> do vw, porsche and audi and have some older guys so i might get lucky.

Well, if you're not fixing yourself anyway, that's as good a solution as
any. But resistors are so cheap you'd be hard pressed to pay more than $3.00
for a selection that gets you those values, even with a minimum purchase of
10 like most places have.

--
John Bange
'90 Vanagon - "Geldsauger"