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Speedometer stops working sometimes

This is the first time I've seen this, was going down the highway and glanced at my 98 Golf's speedometer and saw the needle at 0. Tachometer reads normally though.

The speedometer was cutting in and out, it is working most of the time. Something else that started happening around the same time is the fuel gauge is sluggish to read the accurate gas level (need creeps up slowly).

Both of these problems are intermittent and don't happen most of the time, but are they related? Easy to fix? I am thinking an electrical problem, but this never happened during wet weather and in fact is happening only now in totally dry conditions.

Reply to
Jem Berkes
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On my 89 jetta ( it had a mech. speedomter ) but both the fuel and temp. gauges were intermittant and i found the problem to be a poor connetion on the voltage regulating transistor on the back of the dash cluster. Even though i was sure it was just the connection I replaced the transistor anyway because I had one or two laying around. If you have access to a schematic and find the regulated voltage supplies power to both your speedometer and gauge I'd suspect that's where your trouble is located.

Reply to
samstone

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.epix.net:

Interesting. Where would I find such schematics, can I download them somewhere? For that matter is there a guide to where everything is located under the hood, etc? There are quite a few things I'd like to locate and clean, e.g. power lock vacuum pump, etc. I just don't know where they are!

Reply to
Jem Berkes

Jem , Both Haynes and Bentley repair manuals have electrical schematics and many pictures indicating what is where. The manuals are NOT perfect and some cover a few years so you have to look and read closely to find the info which covers your vehicle. Bentley seems to be the more popular manual for VW's.

Reply to
samstone

Another thought is going to your VW dealer and asking if they can print out the page with your dash cluster. The guys in the service dept. at my local VW dealer have printed a few pages for me for free. I don't know anywhere on line where your schematic can be found , that's not to say it isn't out there somewhere. DoctorDave pointed out a russian site that had many sections from the Bentley manual but that was for a bit older VW.

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Reply to
samstone

well if you want to PAY for the online subscription to Bentley, you can access that info from your computer. ;-)

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alldata.com also has an online subscription service.

I prefer to own a repair manual either paper or electronic! ;-)

Reply to
dave AKA vwdoc1

Thanks for the pointer, I will also try the dealership for some quick info if they're willing to supply it.

After I noticed the analog speedometer not working, now I also see that the digital odometer and trip odometer are not advancing at all. So now it's the fuel gauge, speedometer, odometer all malfunctioning. Yikes!

I don't know a lot of simple things. For example how do I access the dash cluster internals? There is a plastic cover over the steering wheel / turn signals. I noticed that the bottom half snaps into place but I can't seem to remove the top half. Do I have to unscrew something?

Reply to
Jem Berkes

wanna buy a new Haynes for the 93-99(?) Jettas cheap? hehehe

Reply to
dave AKA vwdoc1

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.epix.net:

Hi Sam, any tip for how I can get at the wiring behind the dash cluster? I have no idea how to remove that and access it to begin with. Any tip would be useful, if I can actually see the wires then I can worry about the schematics next. Thanks,

Reply to
Jem Berkes

Sorry Jem , no I don't .

Reply to
samstone

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