That mysterious red paint is the "seal". It was matched to the cable
housing.

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Mages <wasserbox@YAHOO.COM>
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Date: Tuesday, April 27, 1999 11:14 PM
Subject: Shoddy German Workmanship?

>I just pulled apart my instrument cluster today, and I
>found an interesting surprise... part of the
>instrument housing is melted.... one whole corner of
>the speedo mounting box is melted right off.
>
>I looked around in there with my flashlight, and I
>couldn't find any evidence of any sort of electrical
>fire, all the wireing & other parts of the dash seemed
>untouched - it looks almost like they melted it on
>accident @ the factory, then bolted everything in.
>
>I haven't had any electrical problems with it, and
>can;t see anything that might've burned...
>
>That brings up the question - the amount of damage
>that was done to the housing, and the speedo was
>untouched... that could mean a replaced speedo &
>possibly incorrect mileage... any way to tell 100%?
>all the record I have from the PO jive with the
>current miles, but that leaves 1.5years and 15K and a
>journey from michigan to Houston unaccounted for.  It
>never seemed an unreasonable amount of miles, so I
>never thought about it.
>
>Anyways, I pulled the cluster apart & cleaned the
>faces - WOW - taking 84K of dust & grime off makes a
>lot of difference... I don't recommend doing this - it
>isn't hard, but if you haven't done it before it can
>be tricky.
>
>Oh, and I inadvertently fixed my intermittant speedo
>problems... seems some mysterious red paint was coated
>around where the speedo clips in, and was preventing
>it from seating tight all the time.
>
>So the vanagon saga continues...
>
>===
>Mark
>
>87 Westfalia Gl
>84 Scirocco 8v
>
>http://members.tripod.com/~jehanno
>
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