Gretch

looks like someone's already been there....... can't tell what components are cooked from the picture though. Capacitor go and fry a resister?

Man the shark owners down there are lucky to have you in their midst. Someone who knows what he is doing and actually gives a ****......... that is generally a very expensive combination up Nord.

depami

He is saying duct tape is not good on early cars but it is on late cars so if you're working on an S4 you should be good with Red Green repairs.

SeanR

From what I can tell several someones have been in here. Put in a good tach from an '86 and it works great. Trying a fuel/temp from the same cluster to see if I get similar results. Crossing fingers.

Thanks for the compliment also. See, you're not always a grouchy old hillbilly.

Duct tape works great for the GTS's, only way to make them as fast as an S4.

ROG100

Don't you put any duct tape on my GTS 8>)

ROG100

We need to try and fit the 85 to 88 (available) circuit foil on an 82 to 84 cluster to see if it is backward compatible.

SeanR

Heh, if you haven't seen it yet you aint going to find it.

Question for you, any idea how I got a cluster that has nothing but German words on it? No idea where it came from.

SeanR

Bring one over, I'm about to toss this in the trash. New tach worked. Installed new fuel/temp gauge and tach stopped working. Installed old fuel/temp and it started to work and the tach won't.

Fluck.

SeanR

Well, the Tach worked for all of a few minutes, I think this one burned up also. Thoughts/Ideas on what's causing this?

Dave928S

It's f**cked ... which is a technical term for 'it can't be fixed'

Hope that helps .. and you're welcome ...

Mrmerlin

Sean check the CE panel for any jumped wires on the front ,
then take a look at the back of it as well,
look for satin finish on the gray wires if you find any satin finish then they have seen heat.
This might be the cause for the tach failure

soontobered84

Roger, If you remember, I did look at that for the Stepson ('84 Euro) with an extra '85 cluster of yours, but the newer foil has many more pins per connector than do the older cars.

soontobered84

Sean,
You aren't working again on that guy's car that had the Death Button, are you? LOL

karl ruiter

I forget what signal it was that runs directly to the tach. Green wire, or something. Anyway some surprisingly high voltage runs directly to the tach.. 60V or something like that. So if something was funky in the ignition, it might be that an even higher voltage was running back to the tach and cooking the bugger.
The only other thing I can think of would be a ground potential difference between the instrument cluster and the motor.

JHowell37

Let's see, you've got a car that's a '82.
It's using a replacement cluster that appears to be from a '83.
You're swapping in gauges from a '86.

I think the main problem is the '83 cluster in a '82. IIRC, '83-'88 clusters are plug and play (I know for absolute fact that a '87 cluster will work in a '85.)

I would try to find a cluster that you know for certain is from a '82 and keep your eyes open for obvious signs of altered wiring.

Not much mystery here. Just because something fits in the hole, doesn't mean it's the right part, or that it will even work.

tailpipe

check and see if they have spliced something into the green wire my PO was running his rad fans off it PMSL and then couldn't figure out why it ran like crap.....