Author Topic: dash gauge swap (Read 3494 times)

zagarus · « **on:** December 26, 2005, 10:49:48 pm »

can you make a mk4 tdi gauge cluster to work with a 1.6td?

vwmike · « **Reply #1 on:** December 27, 2005, 12:08:19 am »

To make a long answer short - Yes, but it would be an incredible amount of work and expense and I have no idea why anyone would bother.

jtanguay · « **Reply #2 on:** December 27, 2005, 04:48:53 am »

only if you were trying to swap a mk4 tdi into a mk2 chassis would that even be slightly worth it. it should be do-able but who knows if the rpm sensor runs by the alternator or the sophisticated diesel injection pump on the mk4 tdi. its all electronic garbage anyways... good luck hooking that up to a mechanical system :S

zagarus · « **Reply #3 on:** December 27, 2005, 08:04:10 am »

my plan to do the swap was because the rest of my dash is all blue LED's now so i was hoping i could take the nice gauges from a mk4 to finish the look. But im thinking ill just have to make it work without. I keep forgetting that almost everything is mechanical in a 1.6.

NOTORIOUS VR · « **Reply #4 on:** December 27, 2005, 08:15:17 am »

Your best bet in that case would be to attain a MK3.5 Cabby cluster... they're blue/red back lit... you'll just have to find a MK3 diesel tach and possibly some custom wiring... but much less then an MK4 cluster... especially if u'r car is CE2...

Also, you'll probably need to convert u'r tranny from cable speedo to VSS (electronic) because MK3 and newer cars don't use a cable to measure the speed. :idea:

Also, the MK3 cluster will fit much better/closer to a MK2 dash then a MK4 which is quite a bit bigger.

zyewdall · « **Reply #5 on:** December 27, 2005, 08:36:56 am »

Quote from: "zagarus"

my plan to do the swap was because the rest of my dash is all blue LED's now so i was hoping i could take the nice gauges from a mk4 to finish the look. But im thinking ill just have to make it work without. I keep forgetting that almost everything is mechanical in a 1.6.

I bet if you put really bright blue LED's in place of the standard backlighting of the 1.6 guages, they wouldn't look too bad -- not MKIV cool, but at least the same color. The stock dash lighting on the old rabbits was incredibly dim anyway compared to the new ones. A few of the one watt LED's might do the trick.

GTD. · « **Reply #6 on:** December 28, 2005, 03:55:55 am »

I did fit a mk3 IDI TD cluster, but I was having problems clocking it to my current millage, so I fitted a MK2 Ibiza IDI set of clocks that are the same as the MK3 but have mechanical milage counters instead of digital.