Good morning gentlemen, hope your week is off to a good start.

My ‘84 with the S4 engine and ECUs has a wonky main gauges cluster, assuming it is contacts because when I hit a bump it will stop working or start working.

My existing cluster is kind of nasty because the car sat unused outside for a long time.

Woukd you suggest;

1) pulling it and trying to repair and clean up

or

2) saving up and buying a nice replacement on from 928 Intl?

Thanks in advance for the thoughts.

 

Pull it and try repairing it first. I couldn't hurt if it is acting funky,

 

Thanks for the response, I do you suppose I can’t mess it up too badly if I was going to replace it anyway.

My existing panel has tiny white dots everywhere, I’m assuming that is a byproduct of having been badly stored, Wonder if that will come off with compressed

 

My cluster had the little white/beige dots all over, on the plastic surround, not on the gauge faces themselves. As you suggested, this is possibly from long periods stored outside.

I ended up pulling the instruments from the rear, and then carefully separated the clear plastic from the front.
After that, I removed the colored warning lamp pieces from the rear, and the three reflector inserts in the bottom of the housing.

Some careful hand sanding with a foam block sander cleaned up the little blisters all over the black bezel and reflector inserts, and then followed it up with some SEM Trim Black paint.
I'm planning to put some aluminum foil tape in the reflectors since the plastic had long since lost any shine.
Reassembly on mine is going to be using some trim adhesive, since the little plastic welds had to be broken to remove the lenses and reflectors.

As a word of warning, don't use the Rustoleum "Painter's Touch" primer under the SEM Trim paint. Either get the proper SEM primer (assuming one exists), or use the regular Rustoleum enamel primer.
I accidentally bought a can of the "Painters Touch" stuff, and only realized that it was a latex base paint once I'd put down the first color coat causing it to immediately crazed and split all over the surface, and requiring me to let it fully cure and then sand it back off.
Once I used the regular primer, the SEM Trim Black paint went down nicely, with no misbehavior...

 

Thanks for the detailed response.

 

Also, once you have the clear plastic cover off, you can use a headlight polishing kit to make it super clear and clean before putting it back together. That's what I did on mine.

These 2 clusters looked identical before I restored the one that now looks good in the photo. CF background and aluminum gauge bezels are from Jager Engineering.

 

Wow.

Thanks for the pictures.

 

Sometimes you can get white dots that are just some kind of mold (if the car might have been damp inside for a while). In that case, pull the cluster, pull the clear lens and carefully clean the black surround. I don't remember what I used on it exactly. If your gauges are flakey most likely it is either oxidation where the wire harness plugs into the flex strip or oxidation under the screws that connect the flex the the gauges. Both areas that are easily cleaned and de-oxed. Certainly worth a shot.