mpg needle..

hello, hope someone can help.  my gear change light and mpg needle were working fine until the other day.  now when you go into 5th gear the change light still comes on and off but the needle trys to move but then drops back down as the change light activates ?  previous to this fault i refitted the exhaust. where   should i be looking? could i have knocked a switch somewhere? really annoying because this is one of few gti's i have owned where all functions worked fine.    

The switch which tells the MFA that you are in 5th gear, and makes it use the needle instead of the LED, is a dual reversing light/5th gear switch on top of the gearbox. These get old and tatty from the heat of the gearbox, so it might be the case that you knocked the wiring during the exhaust work, or it could just have started to act up by coincidence.

Either way, if you need a new one, you can get the Mk2 version still (Mk1 version obsolete), but you'll have to change one of the wires in the plug connector to make it work on the Mk1.

I just bought one of the original swtiches straight from VW dealers so they must still be around somewhere. It was ?34 though.

Have a look under another post for how to swap the Mk2 switch from GSF (?14ish).

Good luck.

cheers for the help, i will take a look into that later , does this switch control just reverse and 5th gear or does it effect  the mfa?