vanster

At long last I got my dash lights to work. All new bulbs, cleaned everything and all seems OK.
But they are dim. Is this normal? I asked Chris Bauer in Oakland and he says they were never very bright. I guess I can live with it but is there a way of making them
bright or at least bighter. Also they are on with or without the running lights on.
Not too excited about taking everything apart again ( I have done it twice now).
But if I have to it would be great to see a change.

Van
80 5sp, y pipe and MSDS headers

ammonman

You may need to clean the rheostat that controls their brightness. However, even with everything tip top the dash lights in my 1990 are not very bright. Some folks bypass the rheostat by disconnecting the wires and connecting them together and report an increase in light levels. As far as them being on all the time, IIRC all years have a photo sensor in the face of the dash that controls the light intensity. The photo sensor brightens them up when the ambient light level in the pod is high to improve daytime visibility. Once the park lights come on the dash lamps actually dim down so as to be easy on the eyes.

Mike

underdog928

I'm pretty sure the '80 doesn't have the always on/auto dimming feature that the '90 has, I know my '85 doesn't have that. Regardless, I replaced my dash lights with the LED upgrade and bypassed the dimmer and while they are better than they were, they are still pretty dim.

I think the biggest problem is with the silver coating on the light guides under the cluster. There is a procedure, somewhere on RL, to renew the silver coating, but if memory serves, this doesn't completely fix the problem, because the plastic light guides lose transparency with age.

So the best you can get and the easiest thing to try first is to bypass/short out the dimmer and hope for the best.

Mrmerlin

the fist thing you can try is to rehab the rheostat, remove it ahnd clean the spring portion with an eraser, then take a small pointed punch and reswage all of the rivets that hold it together, then test it .
I would also suggest to take a soldering iron to the rivets and the metal parts they attach to and solder these.
If you dont want to try that then fit a new rheostat, your lights will be rather bright when your finished.
Mine were also dim,on the 86,
recoating the light bars didnt seem to help but after the rehab of the rheostat the lights are quite bright.
Note the dimmer portion is only on the digital dashes ,
so earlier cars dont have this function

Erik N

I upgraded the bulbs in my '78 with higher wattage ones, and it made a small difference. But they are still way too dim, even with the rheostat at the brightest setting.

Anyone have pics of the bypass wiring?

Mrmerlin

the bypass wiring is to remove the wires from the rheostat and connect them

Landseer

Be sure to clean the applicable ground points.

rjm65

The coating on the refractors was in poor condition on my 79, here's my fast and easy fix. Works well enough I might just have to hook the dimmer back up!

http://porsche928forums.com/viewtopi...5&p=2237#p2237

concor

My pod lights were very dim too. They are about twice as bright now


First I cleaned the rheostat. The rheostat did 2 to 7 ohm (min/max setting) before cleaning and 0.4 to 6.3 ohm orso after cleaning. I think did that had the most effect and you don't have to remove the pod to remove the rheostat.


Then I removed the old chrome paint and added HVAC tape to the light ways. Now that sounds like a really smart thing to do. BUT. It's interesting. Removing the old chrome paint actually gives about 10% extra light. Very strange. And adding the HVAC tape didn't make any difference at all! And yes, the tape is reflective from the inside. Also, without the tape there is very little light that escapes through the plastic were the original paint was. All in all very strange. Still, 10% more light is always good.


I put new 3 watt bulbs in it. There were actually 5 watt bulbs in and one of the plastic chambers was melted inwards. I melted it again and pushed it back
The new 3 watts gave about the same light as the old 5 watts on my ancient battery charger.
And last but not least I cleaned the sockets the bulbs go in and made sure there were really tight.