Gees, this is getting tiresome...

This morning's a rainy day... First thing I did this morning is remove the speedo/odo head from the circuit board and squeeze all the sockets really tight. Put everything back together, attached harness wires to the speedo cluster and rested cluster on shelf of steering column. Went for a drive. No speedo/odo unless I pushed the cluster into the dash a tad; then the service light would flick on (BTW -- I *did* live dangerously this morning and tripped that lever while at the workbench!) and speedo needle would deflect. Push the cluster in all the way, service light goes out and speedo needle falls to 0. Damn...

So, in the rain, I went back to the pick-n-pull and grabbed the cluster out of an '88 244. Wrong calibration, but what the heck. Brought it back to the '89 245, hooked up the wires, and went for a spin. No speedo/odo function, but no lit service light. I'm now making progress!

So I took both clusters up to the workbench, pulled the instruments off the junker cluster to get the circuit board. Transplanted all my instruments onto the junker circuit board, assembled everything into my box, tach included, went back out (still raining) hooked up the harness, went for a spin. You guess it -- no speedo/odo function unless the box is inserted a tad into the dash, but then it goes out if pushed all the way in.

Problem with the junker cluster is the speedo itself is busted -- the needle only has free motion between indicated 10:00 and 2:00 on the dial. The glass bezel was broken, so I suspect that the speedo head went on the fritz and the driver broke the bezel wacking on the cluster to get it to function again. Unfortunately, it was the only impulse driven speedo head in the yard.

The only thing left is to pull the whole cluster out of my '87 244, wire it up to my '89's harness and see what works. That should isolate the harness from the cluster as a source of the problem, I s'pose. Then I could always pull the speedo head off the the '87's cluster and transplant it into the '89's cluster and see if the problem is with the '89's speedo head. My wife's got the '87, and it's still raining, so I may wait till tomorrow.

One maybe related thought -- what's the purpose of the plastic film with printed copper on it which lives on the top back of the white speedo 'backing' on the circuit board of the cluster? It's got 2 screws to ensure continuity. Is this copper/plastic film calibrated in any way? Knowing how the plastic film 'circuit boards' in the tailights have given me trouble over the years, any harm in removing this plastic film jumper and just soldering on a copper wire jumper instead?

One last thought -- those three pins on the speedo head c.b. -- If I were to hard solder them, yes, I'd not have an easy time removing the head from the cluster's circuit board, but that should forever remove those pins' continuity as a contributing factor, correct? Maybe rather than hard soldering them, I could solder on three jumper wires to bypass them?

Thanks so much for all the help I've received so far. I'll keep you posted, and when this is all done, I promise I won't post *ever again* about speedo problems.

Rob Kuhlman

Gees, I'm getting tired of this.