MAIN BEAM 'LED' TELL-TALE INDICATOR FIX

I did this thread back in 2006!!! But PhotoBucket messed up the pics. I revised, again using Photobucket but they've messed some pics up again.

Back in 2006 it wasn't an MOT fail but I spent a night driving home from the NEC Classic Show blinding half the Midlands….

It became an MOT failure @2010?

Anyway….

After pulling the dash apart to get the instruments out, pin 7 blue and white wire on the multiplug to the instruments (as per Haynes and Autodata books) is +12v when the main beam is on and 0v when off so it looks like all that is working OK and the fault is with the instruments.

The blue plastic membrane is ok with no burns or rips, looks like its never been touched before.

The warning light is blue unlike the yellow LED used on MK1 tin tops, I seem to remember reading that when the MK2 came out VW used an ordinary filament bulb behind a blue plastic cover as blue LEDs weren't availble so perhaps its the same on a '87 Cabrio and the bulb as blown. There doesn't appear to be an easy way to change if that is the case.

1st remove cluster from car, on a MK1 this involves removing half of the interior first…


to dismantle the cluster I removed the 8 screws (two not shown in pic to far right) and the lights that hold the blue circuit board down, highlighted in red….


this then allowed me to gently lift out the 3 main components (rev counter, LEDs/fuel gauge and speedo) as one held together with the blue circuit film from the cluster housing. Then when turned over I removed the black plastic LED 'shield' to reveal my problem. As suspected when built there were no blue LEDs so VW used a clear LED?/filament bulb that had blown and a blue plastic mask;





Back in 2006 I went off to Maplins to get a blue LED, unfortunatly they only had chav type bright blue LEDs, I got a clear one and this other shown with the orginal blown white LED stylee filament bulb. They were 3mm so could be used under the blue plastic mask so not a big problem. These days use Google/ebay to get a blue LED? Insert the right way, short leg or flat side = -ve connection;


Put everything back togther and test. Is brighter than the other LEDs but not as bright as camera makes out;


If I was to do it again I would have used a lower 1.5cd output LED, instead of the brighter3.2 cd type that I did use.

Cheers for the photos Clive.

Link to FAQ section.

https://vwgolfmk1.org.uk/forum/index.php?page=topicview&id=electrical-faq_2%2Fhelp-main-beam_2

I will only add that when I have gone about repairing my clusters for one thing or another I usually replaced all the bulbs for Illumination that is the 2 for the Gauges and the single for the MFA/Clock.  I didn't want to be going back in there for any reason..