84 rabbit problems

[b_cole]

hello all, first post. i just bought a 84 rabbit conv. it has several problems. one of them i think is electrical. The dash lights, guages act like they are not reading correctly and when you turn the head lights on everything on the dask goes out. any one seen this before? thanks

[CalAltaDubber]

hello all, first post. i just bought a 84 rabbit conv. it has several problems. one of them i think is electrical. The dash lights, guages act like they are not reading correctly and when you turn the head lights on everything on the dask goes out. any one seen this before? thanks

Hi and welcome to TRF. Congratulations on the purchase of the Rabbit convertable.

I've not seen the exact problem before. It sounds like a bad ground.

Some years ago I had a Tach in a van that I owned that worked great until the lights were turned on then it would go to 0. What happened there was the ground was bad, so the tach would use the light circuit for a ground. when the lights were turned on that would change the potential and the tach. would stop working.

I think you have a similar problem here. I have looked at the schematic for your car and I suspect the problem is the ground that all the dash instruments are tied to is bad.

VW uses brown wires for ground circuits. I would start with the main connector that connects to the back of the instrument cluster and determine which pin is the ground wire (again the wire will be brown). Using an Ohm meter or multimeter, you should measure 0 Ohms to ground..

My guess is it is open and you will not get a reading. Meaning the wire is broken.

Fixing this should also provide the proper ground for all the instruments.

Hope this helps. Please let us know how things work out.

[b_cole]

Thanks for the info, that will give me a great place to start. Ill give you an update when I get it fixed.

[CalAltaDubber]

Thanks for the info, that will give me a great place to start. Ill give you an update when I get it fixed.

Glad to help. I'm curious to what your problem is.