

| Subject: | Type III clock into Breadloaf |
| From: | Dave Kautz |
| Date: | Wed, 22 Nov 95 10:45:31 PST |
Thought I'd give the list a brief update on my campaign to make that empty hole on the right hand side of my instrument cluster do something useful. Now I know common list wisdom would say to put something to do with oil, temperature or engine speed there but frankly I'm an idiot light kinda guy <I once disconnected my speedometer cable to do some other work and didn't notice the speedo wasn't working for two days> who trusts that the engineers at VW had their thinking caps on when they designed the engine's cooling system. And, since much of my daily activity involves ferrying my kids to and from their many commitments, knowing what time it is is useful to me. So I decided to look for a clock. Several folks responded to my plea to the list, and I thank all of you, but a real bus clock for my '74 was not forthcoming. Ron Van Ness, who has quite the knowledge and expertise in these clock matters it turns out, offered up a type III clock with the proper colorings and fonts at an attractive price. A short while later, said clock was in my hands and last night I installed it. The easy way to do this is to buy a mounting bracket for putting the big VDO tach in the same spot. Of course I didn't do this, since the bracket costs $9 plus shipping. My time being worth nothing, I made a bracket out of steel sheet and subsequently filed on it numerous times until it would fit. At this point, I recommend buying the bracket. I added a thin piece of rubber between the mounting bracket and the gauge <a small cross-section o-ring filched from work> to provide some damping and to help prevent the clock from rotating in it's mount. There didn't appear to be wires in the harness for the clock so they had to be fabricated too. I took the "full time" 12 volts from the headlight switch <this is where the wiring diagram indicates it should come from for the clock>, there is an empty live terminal there which made that easy. A ground wire is also required - there are empty terminal tabs both on the back of the clock and the dash panel. Getting the internal light for the clock was more problematic since I really didn't want to hack and splice my existing wiring harness to do so. I eventually put a terminal doubler on the 4 way flasher switch which is in the vicinity <it has an internally lit knob> and ran a wire of the correct color back to the clock from there. So how does it look? I'm gonna quiz some folks and see how long it takes them to figure out it's not the real bus clock. The type III clock face sits 8-10 mm deeper in the dash. The colors of the background, lettering and needle, are very close. At night, the light level is similar but the color of the light in the type III clock is a little more bluish. This may only require a bulb change to rectify but I haven't looked into it yet. Overall, a pretty straightforward installation with good results, I'd say. Dave
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