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what did I do?

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walshja

walshja

Jedi Warrior
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took the car out for a nice ride today, everything is perfect, but I notice the o-ring that goes behind the bezel on the speedometer is hanging out a bit.

SO

I decide to take things apart, clean the glass lens, and when I clean the chrome bezel and glass lens it made my other gauges look like crap. thinking I have 10 minutes to kill, so why not quickly clean up the other gauges.
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so about 40 minutes later I have all the gauges out, clean the light bulbs, clean the glass and the chrome is as shiny as new. I begin to put things back together . . . tach goes in nicely, oil pressure gauge looks brand new now. get to the gas gauge and everything goes back nicely. I get to the speedometer (where I started) and I get the 1st bracket and thumb nut on and proceed to the other side. I get my fingers up behind the dash and the thumb nut pops out of finger kung-fu grip and it pops up and to the right and drops perfectly down into the radio council. so 15 minutes later after taking the radio council apart and putting back together I get the thumb nut on the speedometer and all the gauges are back in, clean and straight. PERFECT !!! right?

Well, none of the gauge illumination lights work anymore.

what did I do???
 
Look up under there for a ground wire with a circular lug. Remove a thumb nut, put the lug on the stud and replace the nut. Test. That should do it.
 
Tom, well, I took your advice, started looking for the wire, and I noticed the rheostat and thought to myself - could I have hit it by accident?

well a simple twist and everything shockingly works !!

I have found these cars simple to work on, yet I spend so much time accomplishing NOTHING !!!

everything I do involves me overlooking something stupid, wasting a lot of time, but being able to fix the problem in the end. and every time I do something I feel like I know that part of the car inside and out. eventually I will be an expert at this, but it's going to take a LOT of hours "working" on the car !!!

i need a beer
 
walshja said:
I have found these cars simple to work on, yet I spend so much time accomplishing NOTHING !!!

everything I do involves me overlooking something stupid, wasting a lot of time, but being able to fix the problem in the end. and every time I do something I feel like I know that part of the car inside and out. eventually I will be an expert at this, but it's going to take a LOT of hours "working" on the car !!!

i need a beer
Click to expand...

pretty much sums it right there - I think that might be the best explanations of LBC's I've ever read.

:cheers:
 
another one of my goals with this 10 minute project was to figure out why my fuel gauge does not illuminate too bright. after looking at the gauge and the bulb socket everything appears OK, but the gauge is barely, and I mean barely illuminated.

is this common? or should I be looking at something else? the fuel gauge lens was much dirtier than the other gauges, which makes me think it is not original to the car, not that that should affect the illumination.

thoughts anyone?
 
I don't know. Most of the time my dash lights are completely off, once in a while they come on as if my magic. Then they randomly go out again.
When they are on, they are all on nice and bright because I bypassed the rheostat.
 
oh yeah, and I have that beer that you were looking for...
mmm.... and it's really good too!! :wink:
 
walshja said:
another one of my goals with this 10 minute project was to figure out why my fuel gauge does not illuminate too bright. after looking at the gauge and the bulb socket everything appears OK, but the gauge is barely, and I mean barely illuminated.

is this common? or should I be looking at something else? the fuel gauge lens was much dirtier than the other gauges, which makes me think it is not original to the car, not that that should affect the illumination.

thoughts anyone?
Click to expand...

before doing anything else, change the bulb - they get very dim after 30 plus years
 
Fuel gauge lamp on Bugsy is really. really dim. Almost unreadable at night. I took the reast of the gauges apart and sprayed gloss white on the inside and it did help. Unfortunately I cannot get my hands on the screws to get the fuel gauge out. It will stay as is until the dash gets replaced.
 
this is weird, mine was just as Jim described, and without taking the gauge out again, I pulled the illumination bulb out of the socket in the gauge and reinserted a few times, and for some reason it's now illuminating properly, it's almost like something was blocking the light in the gauge and I moved the blockage.

and it wasn't that I didn't have the light inserted in the socket far enough, because I can pull it out halfway and it still illuminates the gauge properly.

I have no idea how I fixed it, but mine is now fixed.

And I gotta say me cleaning the gauges makes a HUGE difference in the look of the dashboard. the chrome shines beautiful during the day with the spotless glass, and at night all the gauges are at the same intensity now.

Jim, you may want to remove the speedometer, then use that opening to remove your fuel gauge. I think there is only 1 thumb screw on the fuel gauge to remove.

I will see if I can take a picture that does my dash justice.

btw, it's about 80 degrees in CT ... PERFECT Midget weather !!
 
It could be that you were getting a poor ground due to dirt/corrosion and pulling it in and out restored a good ground!! :wink:
 
I had to customize my fuel and oil/temp gauge lighting. Now those two are much brighter than the others. My dash is wood and therefore totally different than stock though.
 
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