All you waterpumper drivers who have been burdened by my fierce envy of your
tachometer can relax:  I replaced the dash pod of my 81 Vgon with a late 80's
part, including tach, 100mph speedo, LCD clock.  Pretty painless installation.

For other early 80's Vgons who wish to upgrade:  
1. You need the newer speedo cable, that clips on instead of screws.  I got the
one that goes all the way to the wheel, deleting my EGR countdown box.
2. You need to switch around the wires in the multi-lead connector that connects
to the dash pod.  The connector opens up like a little door and you can 
rearrange the lines easily.  Both early and late use the same connector, with
14 leads.  No idea why they switched them around.  Bentley has the map for
both.
3. Don't know yet whether the fuel gauge will be usable.  The 81 fuel gauge
fits with some trimming, but the markings are half-hidden by the edge of the
module, so I'd rather use the late one.
4. I need to figure out what to do with the water temp gauge.  Seems waste-
ful to have it there unused.
5. If you get the tach alone, you can install it replacing the clock in your
early module, but the gauge markings won't match the early speedo and you'll
have to cut and paste to get the electrical connections right.

It's a nice tach.  The markings are a little patronizing -- green in the
range VW wants you to drive -- but the green is pretty muted once the tach
is installed in the cluster.  The big VW tach is much more usable than the
little 2-inch 0-8000 tach I had before.  The best news is that the adjustment
provided by the built-in potentiometer is enough to convert the tach from
4-cyl to 6-cyl; I don't have to send the tach and a bunch of money back to
VDO for conversion.  The not-best news is that the wreck I got the parts
from had over 160k miles, so that's what my new odo says.

4th of July under the Vanagon: the way it's supposed to be.
B.
Wm Kennedy
kennedy@admin.njit.edu