Window Cleaner

Hi All,

I am new to this section having just bought a 89 944 runaround, Sorry to jump straight in with a problem, but I think I got a bit duped, as there is a really annoying dash problem.

The first thing to notice is that occasionally the Temperature guage will jump straight to Red with ignition on, sometimes it will jump to Red during normal driving
Other symptoms are the Rev needle jumping all the way round and the car will jerk occassionally whilst driving, you also get the same thing if you switch the heater to position 4 (I dont think 1'2 and 3 positions are working)

The Indicators will sometimes work then sometimes illuminate slowly and not flash, sometimes not at all, the Oil Pressure guage and Fuel Pressure guage randomly bounces.

To top all the that the Ignition did not come on at all on a few occasions today, I had to walk away for 5 mins then randomly decided to work again

My Suspects are the Dash Earth, which I hove not been able to locate yet.

Ignition Switch maybe ?

Faulty Heater Controls ?

Has anyone here had similar Faults/Fixes for this problem ?

Thanks Dave

konakat

There are few grounds underneath the dash, google images should help you find them. That is a good first step. The heater positions not working is very common, there is a resistor pack that fails and you end up only having full blast working. There are guides for fixing this, but you have bigger issues to worry about for now. Your problems sound fairly severe, so I doubt it is just bad grounds. I think you are likely correct to suspect the ignition switch.

Clarks-garage.com has a shop manual that will probably give you all the information you need. Bookmark it, you will use it all the time. Good luck!

Window Cleaner

Update on this

The Dash guages have now stabilised.

2 Problems were found,

The Battery Earth strap post connector, was not allowing the current through to the battery very well, The Strap was reading 13.5 volts but the battery post was only reading 12 v, This was changed for a new one to correct this problem.

Second problem was the Cooler fan failing, it eventually seized during searching for the dash problem, we obtained a second hand one from ebay, and now the Car is fine

I still have the Fuel guage problem, but that is probably the sender

mel_t_vin

Bad ground(s)...the root cause of many an issue.

Well done.