I finally got tired of the burnt-out lights on van's dashboard. Coming home Friday we were down to half the speedometer being lit, with the fuel gauge, temperature gauge, and tach being dark.
I took the instrument cluster out yesterday, and found seven of eight bulbs burnt out.
It's not a hard job - remove four screws to free the surrounding plastic trim, four more to free the cluster itself, and then unplug the cable from the back. Electrical only, there's no speedo cable.
The lamps are PC74, and I picked up a box of 10 from NAPA. (No joke, while there I also bought a 1/4"-drive 10 mm socket to replace the one I had lost a few weeks ago.)
Anyway, installation went well, and I reconnected the battery's -ve terminal and checked that all lamps were working before putting the trim pieces back on. All good, so I finished up and started the engine.
No tach! Wha ...???
I pulled the cluster again to ensure that the connector had mated correctly to the cluster. Seemed fine.
And then, it occurred to me that in doing the contortions required to remove and reinstall the cluster, I had flipped it over a few times.
The tach's needle had "redlined", and continued on until it was on the wrong side of the stop.
I removed the cluster, and turned it so that the needle moved back to resting on top of the stop, rather than being below.
All's well now - looking forward to driving at night again.
I took the instrument cluster out yesterday, and found seven of eight bulbs burnt out.
It's not a hard job - remove four screws to free the surrounding plastic trim, four more to free the cluster itself, and then unplug the cable from the back. Electrical only, there's no speedo cable.
The lamps are PC74, and I picked up a box of 10 from NAPA. (No joke, while there I also bought a 1/4"-drive 10 mm socket to replace the one I had lost a few weeks ago.)
Anyway, installation went well, and I reconnected the battery's -ve terminal and checked that all lamps were working before putting the trim pieces back on. All good, so I finished up and started the engine.
No tach! Wha ...???
I pulled the cluster again to ensure that the connector had mated correctly to the cluster. Seemed fine.
And then, it occurred to me that in doing the contortions required to remove and reinstall the cluster, I had flipped it over a few times.
The tach's needle had "redlined", and continued on until it was on the wrong side of the stop.
I removed the cluster, and turned it so that the needle moved back to resting on top of the stop, rather than being below.
All's well now - looking forward to driving at night again.
