As many of your know the late model Vanagon (90-91) used a different
headlight switch than all of the earlier years.  Not sure why VW waited
until the last year of production to address a wiring issue and change the
switch that had worked the entire life of the vehicle but that is beside
the point.  If you have a 90 or 91 Vanagon, at some point the headlight
switch is going to go bad.  Since there is no longer any being made (as far
as I know) the source for good used ones is small, I am thinking that we
need a work around.

So I was looking at a 91 Headlight switch this morning that is on a
customer's van.  I held it up to a "normal" Vanagon headlight switch and
you can see that the prongs on the back are different.  There are two extra
prongs one of which does nothing on the USA Vanagons and the other one
supplies power to the interior lighting, and cluster lighting circuit (any
thing that you can dim with that dimmer wheel on the switch is powered by
this extra wire).  Anyway, I know folks were talking about splicing in the
harness and plug from an earlier Vanagon, but I think I have come up with
an even simplier idea.  I think if you had the old, bad late headlight
switch, and a new early headlight switch, you could probably, just pop the
rear off, clean the circuit points inside, and swap it over to the new
"early" switch.  That way you have a new dimmer, face and contacts, but the
rear of it with the plug in part, stays the same.  This would mean a ready
supply of new switches as long as someone has the patience to pop these
apart and do the swap.

I would like to volunteer to check this out for folks.  But I need a 91
Vanagon headlight switch to use as a donor.  It should be bad to make the
experiment a real test.  It just needs to have a good back on it.  Pmail me
if anyone is interested in helping out with this projects.  The part number
ends in "T" for the late switch that I need.

--
Thanks,
Ken Wilford
John 3:16
www.vanagain.com