UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

right o...... any tips on getting the needle off the speedo (so as i can scan up the backing plate?).... wouldn't ordinarily be too bothered about breaking it on the "donor" speedo as the car that matches the mileage has gone to the big motorway up there. but my needle's kind of "burnt" by 13 years of never seeing the inside of a lock-up so it would be nice to swap and not have to paint it.... not to mention install the dial backing without the "gear change" marks!

i cant get the damn thing off though, no matter how hard i pull (upto a point - dont want to break it).

i've already pushed it down past the stop-post and made a small scratch where it rests, so i can get it back on "properly" calibrated (if it was in the first place!)... getting it off would be a start tho.

i can get the revcounter one off just fine, and the fuel/temp ones shouldn't be any harder? thing is i dont know if i've miscalibrated that now... i tried pushing it past the stick and i could feel some resistance and something *moved*... dunno if i've just altered an end-stop or rotated the entire voltmeter doobry that controls where the needle points! ideally for that i suppose, i need to have an attempt at connecting the clock wires up without fullying installing the binnacle so i can check & adjust with it idling, howling (briefly) at the limiter, etc, which should be fairly well defined points when its warm (~850, 6500...) and show if its shifted.
indeed if thats the case with the tacho i might be able to use it to my advantage and tweak the fuel guage the same way

after that... i think.... maybe try installing the analogue clock in the dash somewhere (there's enough blank space) and covering over the digital one with the ol' "Polo" blanking plate

Does it really matter?

ok no worries on the speedo front, a bit of leverage and a whole lotta courage with a big ass screwdriver saw the needle SPANG off the dial with no damage to either - not 100% sure how i'll get em back on

the problem of the rev counter remains but that'll be less troublesome. its the install thats now going to give me a nightmare

as it stands i couldnt get it on the scanner anyway because of the little stopper-peg (looks like it can be popped in and out but haven't a small enough tool to do it with).... however the digital camera and some very fine positioning seems to do the trick!



as you can see even from this 1/3rd size copy, its a bit blurry cuz of hand-shake and the flash being off, plus i need a flatter background to get rid of the shadows. anyhow, it's a start... i DO have a little desk tripod round there that can be used...

from that i also have these two little templates. if anyone wants the full size ones just pipe up. recounter and fuel/temp guages to come!


just the bare dials... odometer/etc holes could be a little squarer i know but this was whipped up in under 5 minutes


american stylee, hehe.... minimum of design work gone into it but i like it anyway

not really gaz but i would like clean needles if i can.... and a rev counter that actually shows the right numbers!

figured out what the revcounter thing was... its just the needle shifting on the friction-only mount (not keyed) when the meter itself reaches the stops... sooooo putting it in and just having ignition-on at 0rpm, idle (750-850, according to haynes.. ) and at limiter should do the biz. The fuel/temp have keyed pegs to put the needles on but internally seem like wierdly simplistic and not all that accurate bits of kit - theres literally nothing to them but a bit of resistance wire, very very very strange!

Also figured out that its very easy, if a bit time consuming, to clock a polo.. just by p*ssing about with the odo while i had the speedo face off, took 100 miles off the Genesis dials in the space of about a minute once i'd figured it (so it's now 138,300 instead of 138,400 ) so if you had the stamina to keep doing that while watching the footy - or rigged up a drill/etc - you could knock 10k off your car. However please dont ask me how it's done, because im not going to tell, nor am i going to do it to my own car. It's just had an MOT for one thing

Got some more vectorisations of similarly wobbly photos for the revs and fuel/temp if anyones looking for templates... not quite as "square" as before (was very happy that the speedo pic was almost perfectly circular) but does that job - within a few % - and you can quite easily stretch to the correct size before printing if its not right.

scale is something i forgot to mention, luckily VDO made their dials to very simple and friendly dimensions. The speedo is exactly 100mm diameter across the span of the circle outline, the revcounter 70mm (not inc outer mounting screws), and the other guages 80mm top-bottom at the tallest point, and 40mm left-right at the narrowest (between the two dials). Simple!


bare image, b/w vectors from digi photo. large copy (1400x1000 ish, bitmap or original vectors) available.
(note that the start of the scale is 0 - 500 - 750 - 1000 rpm, there is no 250rpm mark here or on the original VW dials)


super fruity coloured-up white background type, inspired by a previous not quite as colourful set of custom dials seen on here before. if you're mad enough to want these, i only have up to 720x500 but i think the vector parts should expand nicely.

think i've fallen in love with that Gill Sans font stylewise, gotta use it for real somewhere..

n'joy

Got the old ones out and the new ones in, in the space of about 3 minutes once i wd40'd the final, tricky screw. That's gotta be one of the easiest things i've ever done.... how come it's supposed to be hard?

more details later.. got a film to go see

ARGH!!! Help!

Well, it all went very smoothly - including swapping in the proper speedo (i've done... something.. that means the GT one wont stay properly calibrated and keeps drifting far too fast - possibly it's "taking the needle off") and giving the tacho needle a tiny adjustment nudge (about 100rpm out )

UNTIL

just finishing screwing in the steering column surround, and i have the ignition on just to make sure the petrol guage is staying level (seems a little more accurate than the old one!).... notice the indicator light is half lit.... test things..

No indicators or wash/wipe! At all!

Pull shroud off, play with wires, jiggle things, reseat plugs... eventually get indicators working again (and light to stay off), and fast-speed wipe OR washer jets (never both) intermittently... cant get actual intermittent, single speed, flick-wipe or anything at the rear to work at all.
Going a bit mad trying to trace the connections and deciphering the spaghetti diagrams in haynes (the switch connections are unlabelled as regards anything intelligible, and the colours are all german)...... can anyone help?!

Will have to brave it with no wipers, questionable indicators and missing shroud to and from work tonight but need it fixed

I did this, I had moved the bottom of the two plugs for the stalks and that stopped the intermittant wipers and indicators from working. As for the rear wiper and such, is it possible youve blown a fuse somehow?

Tahrey1043 wrote: super fruity coloured-up white background type, inspired by a previous not quite as colourful set of custom dials seen on here before.

thankyou . THat speedo needle is a bugger! I lost one of mine (found it a week later it pinged of somewhere when I was plying it of with... plyers .

Tahrey1043 wrote: the colours are all german

haha

das ist brown, unt das ist eine...

go on, get these ones

weiß
schwartz (use the schwartz, duke)
gelb
rot
grunë
grau
blau
braun

not really that hard written that way, but when they're being used as 2-letter acronyms it kills ya.... Just WTF is "WS/SW/GN" supposed to mean if you dont know??? heheh...

i'll have to check the fuses, but i'm just befuzzled about these wires and connectors. I couldn't get all of them off when i was trying to test connections... the one on the left seems jammed in position or at least badly designed, and thats the one where jiggling the leads caused stuff to change. (it's changed again - the current state of play is ok indicators/etc, but no wipers *at all*... i had to take my shirt off and wipe with it to get rid of the wee-small-hours dew on the screen when leaving work)

worst bit of all? this may also have resulted from a little cleaning job i did - bit of a (external) de-gunge with a barbeque skewer*, a quick whizz with the brush attachment on the vacuum cleaner hose and a little blast each side with WD40... which did precisely nothing for the existing problem of "dirty" indicator contacts.

anyway it's 4.30am now, i'll try tracing the wires back tomorrow

PS how accurate, or maybe should I say consistent, should I expect the speedo and rev counter to be? Testing it to see how well I calibrated stuff (basically seeing if the mph/1000 figures stack up even roughly, after allowing for "known" speedo error) I got some very variable results - most memorable being when i tried to measure the indicated speed at indicated 1500rpm... and got either 19 or 21mph depending on whether i accelerated or slowed to that speed...!! a 10% difference! (and i wasn't going 150 indi revs different pace..)
also wondering whether the haynes engine specs rev-wise are accurate... is it really 750-850 idle and 6500 limit? or 800-900 and 6300? hmm

Right, think i've got the frigging things working again. Leaving the surround off for the next day or so just in case it breaks again (plus i need to change the bulb that lights up the speedo, i found last night!)

managed to weedle one of the left-hand connectors free (the small one), a couple of the wires felt loose in that so i pushed them home... the other, large one remains resolutely stuck and i havent the faintest on how to remove it. fast wipe, front washers and occasionally the rear worked on replacing that; jiggling and pushing a couple others back into the big plug has brought everything else back... slow wipe, intermittent, full use of rear.. for now, anyway.

strange what stuff can turn out to be flakey on these machines! guess those wires were never meant to see the light of day..

Bulbs are no problem to replace. Its just the hassle of removing the unit in order to fit a replacement. Just swap one over from the CL clocks, and you will be right.

Karl.

yep, i actually did a full deconstruction on the both of them for the almighty hell of it (and because i was convinced there must be someway to *fully* detach the revs from the outer casing...) and removing the bulbs was neccessary to do that as they held other parts in. pretty easy - put screwdriver in slot, a quarter turn, pull out.

getting the dials themselves in and out isn't so taxing anymore (so long as i dont bash the wires ) its just the hassle of doing it and the chance something may go wrong!

i'm thinking i might actually take the bulb from behind the digital clock and swap with the burnt out one, as maaaan is that thing far too bright

It has a dimmer switch

Tahrey1043 wrote:getting the dials themselves in and out isn't so taxing anymore (so long as i dont bash the wires ) its just the hassle of doing it and the chance something may go wrong!

I can virtually do it blindfolded now, as I have had to take three sets of GT clocks in and out, and put my CL ones back in and out. Was kinda a bit of a bummer having to do it sooo many times on one car.

Karl.

yeah, i figured the trick to it as well... slide it in sideways thru the gap in the wheel (front facing right), connect the lead if there's enough reach, rotate back around, mount onto speedo cable and click... removal being reverse of fitting

i know the dash lights have a dimmer switch, but it's the clock being too bright in comparison to the illumination of the speedo, revs etc that's the problem. it's got one back-mounted 1.2 watt bulb for a tiny surface area with a "white" background, vs two front-mount 1.2 watters over a much larger area of mainly black background...... i suspect it would still be easily readable without the backlight!

(oh, and how easy is that colour swap? damn easy... so long as you can find some high-diffusion frosted acetate and a pair of scissors)

you didnt have any control stalk problems yourself karl?
(btw u have pm)